There’s more than a hint of Narnia to the London home of Sheherazade Goldsmith and her partner Matthew Freud. Cloistered in a cobblestone alley in the shadow of the Westway, the mid-19th-century property presents an exterior façade of smart restraint, yet is full of fun and whimsy within. “Nothing is quite what it seems,” says Freud of the warren-like sequence of rooms that unfolds across the 12,000sq ft interior.
Bill Viola’s series The Dreamers in the hallway © Andrew Urwin
This is no ordinary mews home – a fact that becomes apparent in the entrance foyer, where the walnut-panelled walls are hung with a septet of video screens. Each transmits an underwater portrait from Bill Viola’s series The Dreamers. The effect is simultaneously haunting, hyperreal – and ever so slightly creepy, admits Goldsmith.
The home is an amalgam of three stable buildings and a stable yard, acquired over an 18-month period then connected to form a compound. “It’s a revolving door of children,” says Goldsmith, wearing a slate-grey cashmere jumper with a circular pendant necklace known as Lunar Cushion, filled with her children’s birthstones and worn on a long diamond chain, from her jewellery brand, Loquet London. “They come to celebrate, to commiserate, and when they need feeding or a hug.”
