Working the Room: five homes with ingenious or extraordinary spaces

Coddenham was once (albeit 2,000 years ago) the largest settlement in Suffolk, lying on the Roman road between Colchester in Essex and Norfolk’s Caister St Edmund. Today, around 600 people live in its jettying timber-framed houses and sweet thatched cottages – many of them, like this one, painted in Suffolk’s vernacular pink.

In this particularly enchanting late medieval dwelling, living space is at a bit of a premium, which makes the nifty little kitchen here all the more welcome. It’s tucked into what could be an awkward-shaped room, but thanks to countertops that wrap around a corner wall and well positioned cabinetry at head height, it works perfectly. Sure, you might not be able to squeeze a whole household in here to help with kitchen prep, but on the flipside, if you’re the one cooking, you can pass full washing-up responsibilities to someone else while you put your feet up.

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We’re cheating slightly with this one, as the ingenious use of space here isn’t even in the house at all. Found at the bottom of the garden is a summer house of sorts, a wooden structure that brings new meaning to the word ‘shed’. Fitted with a tiled gable roof, large windows and french doors and painted in Farrow & Ball’s forever smart ‘Breakfast Room Green’ the structure blends in beautifully with the surrounding planting (and makes most modern flat-topped garden studios of the type so popular in recent years look positively oafish in comparison).

Inside, with armchairs to sink into and striped blinds to shade, all is comfort, with striped blinds to shade the glare, and armchairs to sink into undisturbed. With its shelves stuffed with books, there’s always something to read (if you can keep your eyes open), and there’s even room enough for a friend or two to join you. Bliss.

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Saving space is something every Londoner knows (or dreams) about. And nowhere is a clever solution more appreciated than in the kitchen, a room in which clutter and chaos can all too easily take over. At the very middle of domestic life, the kitchen is fundamentally a place of utility, but – as that of this maisonette in Stockwell proves – it ought to be one of beauty too.

Its footprint may be bijou, but every inch here works hard. Laid out as a square, leaving room for a dining table beyond, the countertops and cabinetry wrap around a central workspace, part of which can be used from either side – perfect for helping hands. Satisfactorily, the oven fits snugly into the former Victorian fireplace, while open shelving and hooks frees up coveted cupboard space (having the benefit of looking chic too). And best of all, some bright spark has had the sensible idea of hanging the plate rack above the drying rack. While upping your step count might be desirable, it’s never fun in the kitchen, is it?

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We know from having visited that life at Crowland Manor demands a certain flexibility. The 17th-century house in the Fens is breathtaking beautiful, wildly characterful and utterly idiosyncratic; an easily revamped blank canvas it ain’t. “We live alongside history here,” says its seller, the artist Sophie Wilson, “rather than steering away from it.” A large part of that way of life entails the family following the lead of the building, rather than imposing themselves upon it.

As such, when it came to setting up a ceramics studio at home, Sophie commandeered a disused scullery adjacent to the kitchen. Unrestored, it demands no preciousness – no need to shy away from messiness here – and stands (alongside the laundry, whose warmth is useful drying pots) as perhaps the most convincing argument of adopting a ‘make do and mend’ approach when it comes to shaping historic houses to suit our needs.

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There are plenty of good rooms at this patchwork of a house in Norfolk, from those bearing the traces of its 16th– and 17th-century roots (plank-and-muntin screen, we’re looking at you) to the vast vaulted living room, with its ceiling of chamfered beams. But it’s an empty room – or almost empty room – that’s really captured our imagination.

The conservatory, which runs the length of the longhouse (the oldest part of the building), is, quite simply, astonishing. Currently home to a 100-year-old grapevine and little else, the structure – more glass than wall – is big, bright and beautiful, something you all seem to agree on, judging by the comments we’ve received on Instagram. It’s also full of potential. Think of the paintings you could make in there! The parties you could throw! Oh, the opportunities…

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