This is a semi detached property in the Arts and Crafts style, located within a quiet residential street close to Golders Hill Park.  The site slopes very markedly through the house, such that the ground floor is raised two metres above the rear garden level, with a low ceilinged cellar inserted beneath the ground floor accessed from the rear garden.

The existing house had a coherent front elevation but at the rear a series of ad hoc additions had resulted in a chaotic and spectacularly ugly appearance, with a very poor connection between the house and the garden. 

The design solution extends the cellar and converts it into a playroom accessing onto the garden and fully integrated into the main house by means of a new internal stair. The roof of this extension becomes a terrace, providing a new external space accessible from the principal floor of the house.