Swapping an immaculate townhouse in buzzing south London and a high-octane career in the fashion industry to renovate a crumbling former isolation hospital in rural Staffordshire would be a terrifying prospect for most.
But for Emily Radford, returning to the area where she grew up to raise a family was a long-held dream – so long as there was a project for her to pour her creative energies into.
‘I loved my job and our house in Herne Hill, but having children and working part-time in that industry is tough,’ Emily says. ‘Plus, although we had our daughter’s name down at the local nursery before she was even born, we couldn’t get a place. We started to panic.’
Emily and husband Aaron, an accountant in the green energy sector, decided on a big rural move to be closer to her family and have greener, cleaner spaces in which to raise Ruby, now five (they have since welcomed baby Sid, too, now ten months).
Having sold their London home for a good price in 2018, the couple moved in with Emily’s parents, using it as a base to view nearly 30 houses in their hunt for the perfect project. With the comparably far lower prices in Staffordshire, they knew they would get something substantial for their budget.
‘It was a lovely position to be in,’ Aaron says, ‘but we had to make some big decisions. Did we want to buy our forever home or something smaller to start with? We even considered buying a plot of land and being self-builders.’
They settled on the forever home and, as so often happens, found it by chance.
‘We were viewing a house in a village nearby, when the agent called and said this former isolation hospital in Wombourne had just come on the market,’ Emily says. ‘We headed over and knew the handsome red-brick building was the one. There were, however, a lot of hurdles to overcome before we could transform it into our dream home.’
In December 2019, the couple paid £640,000 for the building, which is in a rural spot about a 15-minute drive from Wolverhampton. And over the course of the next two years, they would spend about £185,000 on its restoration.
Being sold as a single property, it had been divided up into two homes in the 1950s, with two bedrooms on one side and four on the other, two kitchens and separate drainage and utilities. The full structural survey revealed a litany of problems, including rotten floorboards and collapsed drains, plus interiors that would need ripping out – think lino, chipboard and polystyrene ceilings.
‘It was just the challenge I was looking for,’ Emily laughs. ‘Although, of course, it was ironic that after buying it, we would find ourselves isolating here during Covid.’
In the Victorian era, the hospital was used to keep scarlet fever patients away from the rest of the community. ‘We found a photo of the house with the nurses and doctor outside with some of their patients,’ Emily says. ‘Above, more patients stare out through the windows, like little ghosts.’
There were inevitable delays caused by the pandemic. ‘Project managing the work was incredibly challenging,’ Emily says, ‘and I felt guilty putting my young family through the stress. But I knew we had to do something amazing to make it worth it.’
Aaron says appreciating the ‘silver linings’ was key, such as period quarry-tiled flooring under a layer of concrete in what is now the kitchen area and salvageable floorboards and a fireplace.
For £3,000, the couple had a smart timber front door with glazed arch made, a replica of the original. They also spent £18,000 on a heating and hot water system, future-proofed to be compatible with renewable energy sources down the line.
Aaron happily credits his wife with the creative flair that’s on show throughout what is now a two-storey, five-bedroom, three-bathroom house that flows across nearly 3,000sq ft of living space.
With the technical help of architects APC Planning, she devised a new layout and interiors scheme that would suit family life on a grand scale, incorporating bold colour and richly patterned textiles.
‘I was very pushy about what I wanted,’ Emily says, ‘which was to create the unexpected. Because of my background in fashion, I am not afraid of using colour and making bold statements.’
The hub of the home is the £5,000 kitchen, which is south-facing so as to benefit from natural light. Solid wood doors are by Masterclass Kitchens with brass handles found at Facebook Marketplace; antique-mirror splashbacks are a stunning alternative to tiling. Emily says she didn’t want the look to be ‘too polished’ and had the island worktop made out of solid oak from local salvage yard Cawarden Reclaim, with a feature chandelier from Dowsing & Reynolds hanging above.
The adjoining dining room is a masterclass in how to add a contemporary twist to a usually formal room. Painted in mylands.com’s welcoming, pinkish-red Egerton Place, it features the Danish industrial-style Welles table, whose walnut top contrasts with industrially styled coarse, cast-iron legs (a big investment at £6,265, from heals.com). Antiques and artwork are juxtaposed –ornate gold mirrors from Old Mill Antiques Centre and Jones Of Shropshire are mixed with edgy contemporary prints, such as Yellow 11 Turbo In A Pool by Chris Labrooy.
In fact, every room is a surprise. In the main living space, walls painted in Homebase’s Zebra Black and a scene-stealing ‘Ballroom’ chandelier by Abigail Ahern provide the drama, augmented by a battered leather Chesterfield and Emily’s own 3D artwork.
In the TV-cum-playroom, Mylands’ sunshine-bright Circle Line yellow adorns the ceiling, from which hangs a handblown dimpled-glass Bohla pendant light (£299 from Heal’s). The fireplace has even been given a fun makeover, with a cheerful stripe of candy-pink paint.
Emily changed one of the six bedrooms to create a magnificent ensuite to the main one, which overlooks fields at the front of the home. The real talking point here is the vintage fireplace, which she had shot-blasted and sprayed silver.
It was only after returning home from a summer holiday in 2021, that Emily says she really felt a sense of achievement.
‘It’s easy to get lost in the negative stuff, like leaving my job, and all the difficult parts of the renovation,’ she says. ‘But it gave me such a sense of purpose.’
The house has won several design awards, which has further bolstered Emily’s confidence. ‘I’ve working on a couple of other design projects now,’ she says. ‘I can definitely see now where I’m going with my career.’
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