Behind a brick façade on Whittlesey Street, a six-minute walk from London’s Waterloo Station, a two-up, two-down terraced house built in the 1820s has become an unlikely urban oasis. Its current owners—gallerist Caspar Giorgio Williams and stylist Michael Darlington—have transformed the property into what they describe as an “urban cottage.” Here, fruit trees, vines, and dahlias spill into a garden that carries the scent of the Mediterranean.
Williams, who grew up near Siena, speaks of the space with enthusiasm. “It’s harvest time,” he says, pointing to the ripening produce and herbs drifting through the house. The garden, once neglected, now flourishes with roses from Sissinghurst, pelargoniums from Dixter, and supermarket plants thriving among wildflowers and bulbs.
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The house that shaped a legend
The property holds a history as vivid as its present. In 1958, a young Nicky Haslam rented the same house, drawn to its worn charm. “I thought it was a slum,” he later said. Yet the Regency terrace caught his attention—a “to let” sign in the window—and within days, he and his partner, painter Michael Wishart, moved in.
Haslam, who became one of Britain’s most influential interior designers, left his mark on the space. He coated the living room in bright-red car paint, as lacquer was too costly, and draped the dining room in parachute silk, shaping it into an oval tent lit by lanterns. The gatherings there became legendary, with guests like Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud, and Rudolf Nureyev. Greta Garbo once arrived unannounced at dawn, wearing a raincoat and a Tyrolean hat.
Decades later, Williams and Darlington took over during the pandemic. “It was a wreck,” Williams recalls. With his passion for gardening—he once walked 135 miles to support the Garden Museum’s archive—they began restoring the space. Darlington, who divides his time between London and New York, repainted the interiors in soft greens and chalky stone, removing layers of bright paint from Haslam’s era.
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A garden as a creative engine
The backyard now drives the couple’s work. The garden’s bounty also shapes their social life. They host picnics and dinner parties, serving dishes made from their own herbs, vegetables, and fruit. “Life at Whittlesey revolves around the garden,” Darlington explains. “We treat it like a simple gardener’s cottage.”
This philosophy resists London’s fast pace. The house, once a bohemian hub for artists and aristocrats, now feels like a retreat. It offers a rare quality in central London: a home that feels both lived-in and enduring, where history and the present coexist.
