Rewriting the past

In the early 1980s, I saw an advert in The Times: “Extraordinary property, minstrels’ gallery, in need of total restoration.” It was a ground-floor flat in 9 Queen’s Gate, one of those big old Kensington houses. It was a wreck, with no bathroom or kitchen; it did have an orangery with a minstrels’ gallery, as well as a dining hall and bedroom.

My then-husband, Richard, and I sold our flat in Maida Vale, which gave us the money to buy it for £85,000. We borrowed more to do it up – we spent at least £150,000 and got into dreadful debt. The cost escalated out of all proportion; everything took 20 times longer than we’d thought, and was three times more expensive.

I was determined to preserve the original features of the place, which were beautiful. I made an office in the minstrels’ gallery and in order not to take anything away from the main rooms, I built a kitchen and bathroom in the corridor and put an ensuite bathroom in the bedroom. In every room there were stained-glass windows designed by William Morris, with his original wallpaper in the dining hall. The room had been boarded up for 40 years and the wallpaper had so much arsenic in it, you had to wear a mask when you went in. I tried to get as near to the old wallpaper as possible, with huge flowers and wonderful colours. The fireplace looked black, but after it had been cleaned, it turned out to be pale pink Italian marble. I put my mahogany table in there, which easily seats 30. It’s a family heirloom and I’ve lugged it wherever I’ve gone. I’ve never had matching chairs, just an assembly of throne-like ones, some off an old ship.

We were on a tight budget, so I did as much as I could myself, including stripping back the wood floors. When I threw out the disgusting, rotting carpet in the dining hall, I found glorious wide planks underneath. There was a parquet floor in the orangery, as well as a massive fireplace, panelling and cornices. It was the size of a ballroom, with banks of stained-glass windows and a stained-glass roof that wound open with levers. The William Morris colours were magnificent; it was like a rainbow when the sun was out. The orangery was black when we bought it, but I painted it cream, its original colour, and furnished it with white sofas and bright kelim rugs. Plants thrived there; in fact, it was a bit of a jungle. The bedroom had a huge fireplace, which was mirrored and carved. I didn’t want to throw it out, so I made it into a bedhead. That meant the bed had to be elevated 4ft, so we had to climb up to get into it. The room was pale blue, with a compact and ultra-modern ensuite. The other bathroom was panelled in dark wood.

The apartment was haunted by a Russian countess who once lived there with her husband, a lord. She boarded up the dining room when he died and, from then on, she lived, ate and slept in the orangery. Apparently, she used to throw grapes out of her window at people. One of her favourite friends was Freddie Mercury. She threw a grape, and he came in. There was a grand piano in the orangery that he used to play. I put an organ with big pipes in there, and sometimes, it would start playing all by itself. One day, I was talking to the decorator about paint. We had a book of colours and were standing close together. There was a ping and I said, “Did you drop something?” “No, I thought you had,” the decorator replied. We looked down and between us on the floor was an exquisite pearl collar button. Then, a dear friend of mine died. Her photograph hung on a hook in the minstrels’ gallery, but every morning, I would find it propped up on the floor, facing the wall. Part of the orangery was always icy cold. You might have thought it was a draft from the roof, but if you stepped into the cold, you’d feel strange.

Richard and I got into the Queen’s Gate project thinking it would take only a few months, but it took nine. During that time, we lived in a vacant flat of a friend on the King’s Road. It had no running water and no kitchen. It’s amazing what you can do with an electric kettle, including boiling an egg. I wrote my first television series, Widows, there, hunched over an old word processor. It was extraordinary to be under such stress and yet be able to write and change my life, because, after Widows, I never acted again.

Once the Queen’s Gate flat was finished, it was featured in Homes & Gardens magazine, then in Paul McCartney’s film, Give My Regards to Broad Street. Richard thought it would be good karma to have what remained of the Beatles there. He was a rock musician – or hoped to be.

We left the flat because I got into a fury about parking. In Queen’s Gate, you can never find a place to park, even if you have a resident’s permit. It used to drive me to distraction. One time, I stopped outside and had the car boot open so I could quickly unpack my groceries, and they still gave me a parking ticket. I thought, “I’m out of here,” and moved to Kingston.

The flat was on the market for quite a while. The agent said, “It’s so exotic, you’ll sell terribly quickly,” but it wasn’t easy to sell for exactly that reason. In the end, we did sell it, in 1988, and made a big profit. Somebody once said it looked as if Sarah Bernhardt had just left it, and they were right.

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