‘The house was clinging for breath’: What it’s like to live in a Tudor home as a guardian

In the late Eighties and early Nineties, Julian Machin lived in London’s magnificent Sutton House as a property guardian. Here he reflects on his time there as he returns for a reunion with those he lived with

For four years the author lived in the National Trust’s Sutton House as a guardian (Paolo Witte)

Just before moving into the National Trust’s Sutton House, I wrote in my journal:

It was going to be an adventure. I climbed one staircase, moved across, descended another and was lost inside, not knowing which direction I was facing… the dim-lit emptiness lent tranquillity with dignity – a quality existing in places where the crowd has departed. In time, all of the boarded-up windows were freed and the light flowed through the house once again.

The sinuously gracious, east-end, brick-built Tudor property on Homerton High Street has stood since 1519, and, by the summer of 1992, I’d been living there with up to four friends since 1988 while the Trust worked out a feasibility study on its future.