London's Lovely Bits:LITTLE HOLLAND HOUSE Location: 40 Beeches Avenue, Carshalton SM5 3LW [map] Open: 11am-5pm (1st Sunday of the month ONLY) Admission: free Website:friendsofhoneywood.co.uk/little-holland-house.html Virtual visit:video/3D walkaround Four word summary: Frank's extraordinary ordinary home Time to allow: up to an hour
You may have done some DIY on your house but you won't have created anywhere as astonishing as craftsman Frank Dickinson, artist and designer. He created Little Holland House from scratch, both structure and interior - "a house with beautiful things inside, a house solid looking and not showy". And a century on it still stands pretty much unchanged, up an unlikely suburban backstreet, occasionally open to the public. Don't expect where you live to be awarded the same honour.
Frank was born in Paddington in 1874 but sought to move away from the slums to start a better life. Inspired by John Ruskin he came to Carshalton, bought a plot of land amid the cornfields and started to build. He didn't have much cash so drew up the plans himself, created the furniture himself and employed the bare minimum of labourers to assist. Frank and his bride Florence moved in on their wedding night in 1904, then spent the honeymoon sanding window frames and staining the floors, as you do. Over the next few decades they added further furniture and features and made Little Holland House into a true Arts and Crafts home, combining function and beauty. And they lived here together for six decades until 1961 when Frank died, leaving Florence alone until she was forced to move out in 1972. That's when the London Borough of Sutton stepped in, recognising they had something special on their patch, and duly opened up the house (occasionally) to visitors.
Beeches Avenue has been built up somewhat since 1902, no longer a quiet lane poking out into fields. Walking down from Carshalton Beeches station past a Tudorbethan bakery and several pleasantly ordinary houses, you do wonder if you can possibly be in the right place for a visitor attraction. Number 40's not even the most attractive house in the street - it's pebbledashed for heaven's sake - but the intricately carved gate and bespoke letter box hint at treasures within.
You have to ring the bell to get in, entering a tiny hall because Frank didn't believe in wasting space on pleasantries. From here it's only a few steps to the living room, and that's when the scale of his project hits you. Downstairs is finely decorated throughout and almost entirely by Frank, from the coal-box by the fire to the herringbone parquet floor - ideal for dancing on. There are copper fingerplates on the (wider-than-usual) doors, stencilled curtains in the oriel window and inscribed joists over the opening to the sitting room. Wooden and chunky would describe a lot of the furniture, which is mostly in pine, although the chairs (and the cake stand) are walnut. As a budding artist all the paintings are Frank's own too, including the triptych over the fireplace depicting the dignity of the working man and the four family portraits embedded in the dado. A small landing a few steps up the stairs provided a mini-stage for in-house entertainment, while the gramophone is still poised to play The Blue Danube.
Upstairs the master bedroom is a lovely space, from the carved inscription on the bedstead to Florence's embroidered curtains. Most striking is the painted frieze in green and blue around the top of the walls, illustrating lines from Longfellow's poem The Spanish Student. I could almost imagine 1970s Habitat selling this design on a peel-off strip, although Frank's design is a little too tasteful for that. In the boxroom are further accoutrements, from an oak dressing table to the couple's Singer sewing machine, plus one of Frank's paintings that almost made the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition in 1946. Only the bathroom and front bedroom lack original features, the latter now an exhibition room where additional ephemera is displayed. It turns out Frank concocted detailed plans for the redevelopment of Carshalton town centre after the war, but as an opinionated amateur they never reached fruition.
Until 2017 the front bedroom was inhabited by a live-in curator, hence the kitchen isn't quite what it used to be either. These days a bunch of local volunteers show you round instead, which quite frankly makes for a better experience, plus they're doing up the back garden with the aid of a grant from the Metropolitan Public Gardens Association and it's coming on nicely. Here I enjoyed a separate photo archive in Frank's pebbledash shed and also met Poppy, a noisy and extremely tactile ginger cat. If I've encouraged you to visit be aware that the doors to Little Holland House aren't open very often, only on the first Sunday of the month, so it'll be several weeks before you can follow in my footsteps. But do stick a reminder in your calendar if you're interested because Frank's gem of a property deserves more awe and attention, and maybe you'll gather some ideas for doing up your own place too.
