A new start: why one couple swapped their large Victorian home in Manchester for an apartment in central London

Jackie and Neil Prosser traded their large Victorian house in Manchester for an ‘easier, more casual urban lifestyle’ in central London.
In with the new: Jackie and Neil Prosser used their move to Marylebone as a chance to clear out and update their style
Matt Writtle
Dominic Lutyens17 May 2021

In a reverse of the current pandemic-fuelled trend for trading up the property market, just over two years ago, Neil Prosser and his wife, Jackie, moved from their large family home in Manchester to London, where they bought an apartment in a handsome Edwardian mansion block in Marylebone.

One catalyst for this was their two sons starting university. Another was Neil’s retirement from Flannels, the chain of high-end fashion stores he founded more than 40 years ago. Until recently its HQ was in Manchester. "I didn’t want to retire in Manchester," he says. "We both wanted a different way of life and more culture — theatre, ballet, opera."

Jackie, who’d worked part-time at Flannels, also fancied a change of scene. "After living for 25 years in Manchester, I wanted a new start, albeit rather late in life. I wanted to scale down from our big Victorian house with a garden to a central London flat for an easier, more casual urban lifestyle."

In fact, Jackie and Neil have made a fresh start in more ways than one after Jackie realised she no longer felt attached to the traditional decor of their Manchester home. "We’d filled it with antique furniture, paintings and bric-a-brac bought in antique fairs in and around Cheshire, but I had a huge clear-out in 2017," she remembers in almost liberating terms. "I felt I needed a new look and new start."

The couple extensively redesigned the interior of their now three-bedroom Edwardian flat with a bright and open, gallery-like hallway
Matt Writtle

Moving to a smaller home inevitably sped up this process since it involved shedding more possessions.

Neil has long been a collector of contemporary art and today, in their new flat, he and Jackie wanted to give prominence to their mainly figurative paintings and photographs by a roster of international artists.

But the flat had to be extensively redesigned to show the art to its best advantage. "The flat hadn’t been renovated since the early Sixties," says Jackie. "The previous occupant had been Audrey Lewis, a former Lord Mayor of Westminster. Her stepdaughter, who wanted the property to go to a family rather than a developer, sold it to us. Our sons, Ryan and Miles, gladly put in appearances during the buying process."

The flat had huge potential for improvement but was gloomy and the rooms felt disconnected. "We wanted our home to feel more open and maximise the space," says Neil.

Originally, the front entrance led straight into an unusually long hallway running down the centre of the flat. At its far end was a narrow doorway, allowing only a trickle of light into the space. Resembling a dingy corridor rather than an impressive entrance, the hall felt distinctly anticlimactic.

Another key requirement was to convert the flat from a four-bed to a three-bed home. While spending much less time with their parents, Miles and Ryan haven’t fully flown the nest — they still have bedrooms when they want to stay with Jackie and Neil.

The couple hired London-based Mata Architects to remodel the apartment. A major challenge was to retain as much wall space as possible while finding ways to make the apartment feel more open and bring in more light. The firm’s main proposal was to create a stronger link between the hall and the rest of the flat, while allowing the hallway to feel like a room in its own right — and a gallery when hung with artworks.

To this end, they removed the narrow doorway and wall at the far end so the hallway now flows into the semi-open plan, south-facing area incorporating the living room and dining room. But they compensated for this loss of wall space by retaining about a third of the same wall, visible to the left as you enter the living room.

A door once linked the dining room and hallway but this has been filled in while a section of the wall that once separated the spaces has been removed, allowing the two areas to com) the flow into each other. Large windows flood both spaces with daylight. The dining room adjoins the kitchen, the two areas linked by a wide opening rather than a door — although the two spaces can be separated by large folding doors.

The interiors now display the couple’s art collection, and the kitchen has been radically modernised
Matt Writtle

Losing a bedroom freed up space to add an ensuite to the main bedroom.

The kitchen was radically modernised. Now it features super-sleek dark wood cabinets and white marble worktops from Boffi, giving the space an unexpectedly futuristic look — save for the view of the building’s 19th-century courtyard.

Much of Jackie and Neil’s art collection is concentrated in the gallery-like hallway, now brightly lit by vintage pendant lights from Dutch company Raak.

The mid-century furniture embodies the couple’s new sophisticated but laid-back London lifestyle. "I used to dislike it — I had memories of my parents’ Schreiber furniture and said to Neil, ‘We’re not going down that route,’" says Jackie. "But then I could see the amazing quality and workmanship of the Scandinavian pieces. Yet they’re casual and low-maintenance. I just dust them occasionally and polish them once in a blue moon."

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