Natalie Sytner credits serendipity with helping her find her current home. Six months pregnant and bedridden with morning sickness, after hours of scrolling on Rightmove, the founder came across a familiar-looking house in Kensal Green, northwest London. ‘I’d walked past it so many times, and thought it was like a Tardis,’ she says of the property’s surprisingly grand proportions.
At the viewing, the estate agent revealed that, coincidentally, he had a client wanting to move to the road Sytner was living on. A swap of photos followed, and within 24 hours she found herself not only in a position to sell but also to buy her dream home. The former fashion PR and her family – husband George Yandell, a creative director, and their two daughters, Gia, five, and Alba, three – moved into the converted vestry, attached to an old church and a one-bedroom former rectory (which they also own), in 2021.
‘It’s a really lovely area to bring up a family,’ she says of the house’s proximity to design havens Habibi Interiors and Retrouvius, as well as Queen’s Park and the Italian culinary institution L’Angolo Delicatessen. Sytner set about renovating the 3,800-square-foot home almost imme- diately, employing a contractor who happened to be a former tenant of the property, familiar with the house’s unusual quirks. ‘It’s hard to find out exactly when the house was converted because it has been remodelled by so many people,’ she explains, of its higgledy- piggledy c.