We didn’t set out to restore a house. We weren’t even in the market for a house.

In 2017, in the the middle of Meghan’s PhD, we suddenly found ourselves having to vacate the rather lovely terraced house near York Minster that we’d been letting. It was a difficult and unhappy move, involving three people, two dogs, four cats, and a series of seven temporary AirBnBs over the holidays. Ultimately, we got very lucky and ended up buying a semi-detached in a great part of town, with a garden, and pond, and koi. We rode out the rest of the PhD and the pandemic there. We got married while living there. It was great.

I, Meghan, have a habit of collecting expats though, and another housemate took the place of the first. After a few months, he was looking for a flat, and I was helping with the daily search for apartments in York’s very, very competitive rental housing market. (Seriously, flats go within a day here. If you’re not the first to see it and apply, you might as well not bother to show up for a viewing.)

Doing the daily listing search, I ended up accidentally on the ‘sale’ tab, instead of the ‘lettings’ tab — and there she was. A largely unrestored, Arts and Crafts period, barely-attached cottage in one of the most swank areas of town, but nestled back away down a private lane and sandwiched between a giant green swath of racecourse and a tucked away park and community garden allotments. Her interior was covered in the landlord’s special of magnolia paint, but even just in the pictures, I could see her promise. There were dado rails and picture rails and plaster cornices and exposed wooden beams and so, so, so many leaded glass windows.

I arranged to visit that afternoon, and when Martyn came home, told him, “I’m putting an offer on this house in the morning. You won’t be able to see it until Saturday though, you’re just going to have to trust me.”

And bless him, he did.