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"Use every man after his desert, and who should 'scape whipping?"

Thursday 19 March 2015

A little glimpse of paradise on the Wandsworth Road

As so often seems to happen, I switch on the radio and hear, within seconds, someone talking about something that has been cooking away at the back of my mind for years.

As so often seems to happen, I switch on the radio and hear, within seconds, someone talking about something that has been cooking away at the back of my mind for years. Usually it's on BBC Radio London, and even more usually it's on the Robert Elms SHow. As indeed was the case today.

Today, it was hearing someone from the National Trust  talking about an amazing house interior, created entirely by one man in his spare time from a busy job in the Civil Service. I immediately thought they had to be discussing 575 Wandsworth Road - a house I have walked past thousands of times - and which is now owned by the National Trust and is also about to open to the public after years of restoration.

This NT person mentioned a free lecture on the topic to be held later the same day in Twickenham Public Library. Oddly enough, for someone spending more than half his life in SW LOndon, I'd never been to Twickenham town centre before (well I have been through it, but never to it). That day, I was there within  an hour, thanks to SW Trains.

It was an excellent lecture by the NT's conservationists, who helped to bring the house back to life with her discussion of the owner and creator of this place, Khadambi Asalache. Mr Asalache came to London in the 1960s as a student. His multiple talents - poet, novelist, mathematician, philosopher - flowered in the fertile climate of that age, even while he was holding down a full-time day job in the Treasury.

She added that he first spotted the house when travelling to work on the 77 bus - a route that we all know only too well, and still love, even though it's now the 87.

Next day, I more or less run down the road to scope the place out. There's nothing outside to give the slightest clue of the treasures within, nor even a hint the tit's a National Trust property. The place is so fragile that the trust is having to limit visitors, and advance booking is essential. But what a place it is,  to enter the house is to enter one man's dream, a secret dream world of East African artistry, heavily influenced by both indigenous art from Kenya but also the Islamic art of North Africa and Spain, the art of Granada.

He needed a place nearer the office. He bought the house in 1983, and began decorating it to his taste - but persistent damp in the cellar led him to line the walls with fretwork panels which now characterise the whole place. It's a fretwork Alhambra, built in a tiny Victorian terrace on an unglamorous stretch of an unglamorous south London trunk route, and it is magical.

Visit!

Great to hear the NT has employed a musician in residence this year - check out the programme of events on the NT's 575 Wandsworth Road website.









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