My Favourite Airbnb: This Engine House Sat Empty For A Century, Now It’s A Photographer’s Hideaway

I visited mid-week, across a few perfect autumn days, with the three girls I first lived with in London in my early 20s. Nowadays, we’re no longer waking up, finding a smudged Big Mac on the pillow next us in a dodgy hostel (true story), but looking for a design-led space built for gathering, with my best friend Milly’s six-week-old baby in tow.

We hit The Engine House like a hurricane, balancing baby bags, cheese boards, wine bottles, a supermarket shop, blankets, jumpers and even candles. But, pouring into the kitchen it was clear within seconds that this Airbnb was more than ready to handle us. Sandy has done an incredible job taking the old bones and renovating the space sympathetically, but with a contemporary edge, ensuring that the extended wing is a natural continuation of the original building and bringing loads of natural light and three spacious bedrooms.

The heart of the home is the kitchen and dining space, flowing down into a sunken snug and above, a mezzanine. On your right is the old brickwork, on your left a spanning glass wall that opens out into the courtyard garden, continuing around the house’s interior floor plan. The light is, just, gorgeous – filling that big ol’ kitchen with golden sunshine at 4pm.

Keep walking and you’ll cross the threshold between old and new: polished concrete floors lead the way to a ground-floor bedroom with floor-to-ceiling windows and walls decorated with framed fabric samples, while an angular staircase continues upwards to two more bedrooms and a larger bathroom, complete with skylight and tub.

While beautifully curated, the decor is delightfully unfussy so you don’t need to worry about making a mess. The rustic wooden dining table became our meeting point, where we ate, drank, laughed, regaled, reminisced and line danced. It chimes with Sandy’s vision of a home-from-home that’s “not precious, always generous”.