575 Wandsworth Road,

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

, was the home of

Kenya ) , national_anthem = " Ee Mungu Nguvu Yetu"() , image_map = , map_caption = , image_map2 = , capital = Nairobi , coordinates = , largest_city = Nairobi ...

n poet and civil servant Khadambi Asalache until his death in 2006. Following his death he left it to the

National Trust The National Trust, formally the National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty, is a charity and membership organisation for heritage conservation in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. In Scotland, there is a separate and ...

, which opened the house as a museum for pre-booked guided tours.

History

Asalache bought the "two-up two-down"

Georgian Georgian may refer to: Common meanings * Anything related to, or originating from Georgia (country) ** Georgians, an indigenous Caucasian ethnic group ** Georgian language, a Kartvelian language spoken by Georgians **Georgian scripts, three scrip ...

terraced house In architecture and city planning, a terrace or terraced house ( UK) or townhouse ( US) is a form of medium-density housing that originated in Europe in the 16th century, whereby a row of attached dwellings share side walls. In the United State ...

in Wandsworth Road in 1981, paying less than the asking price of £31,000.National Trust look for £4m to preserve Khadambi Asalache's house
''The Guardian'', 20 January 2009 The property was in a poor state of repair when he bought it, having previously been occupied by squatters.Obituary
''The Times'', 24 June 2006 For 20 years,
''The Daily Telegraph'', 19 January 2009 he decorated it internally with Moorish-influenced

fretwork Fretwork is an interlaced decorative design that is either carved in low relief on a solid background, or cut out with a fretsaw, coping saw, jigsaw or scroll saw. Most fretwork patterns are geometric in design. The materials most commonly use ...

which he cut by hand from discarded pine doors and wooden boxes. The intricate woodwork was augmented by illustrations of African wilderness, and his collection of 19th-century English

lustreware Lustreware or lusterware (respectively the spellings for British English and American English) is a type of pottery or porcelain with a metallic glaze that gives the effect of iridescence. It is produced by metallic oxides in an overglaze fini ...

.Call to save Kenyan poet's home
BBC News, 19 January 2009. The property was shown in '' World of Interiors'' in 1990, and in the '' Sunday Telegraph Magazine'' in 2000. Tim Knox, director of

Sir John Soane's Museum Sir John Soane's Museum is a house museum, located next to Lincoln's Inn Fields in Holborn, London, which was formerly the home of neo-classical architect, John Soane. It holds many drawings and architectural models of Soane's projects, and ...

, in ''

Nest A nest is a structure built for certain animals to hold eggs or young. Although nests are most closely associated with birds, members of all classes of vertebrates and some invertebrates construct nests. They may be composed of organic materi ...

'' in 2003, described it as: The work takes inspiration from the Great Mosque of Cordoba, the Alhambra and

Generalife The Generalife (; ar, جَنَّة الْعَرِيف, translit=Jannat al-‘Arīf) was a summer palace and country estate of the Nasrid rulers of the Emirate of Granada in Al-Andalus. It is located directly east of and uphill from the Alham ...

in Granada, doors in

Zanzibar Zanzibar (; ; ) is an insular semi-autonomous province which united with Tanganyika in 1964 to form the United Republic of Tanzania. It is an archipelago in the Indian Ocean, off the coast of the mainland, and consists of many small islan ...

, panelled interiors in Damascus, and the waterside houses or

yalı A yalı ( tr, yalı, from Greek ''yialí'' (mod. ''yialós''), literally "seashore, beach") is a house or mansion built right on the waterside (almost exclusively seaside, particularly on the Bosphorus strait in Istanbul) and usually built with ...

Istanbul ) , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = 34000 to 34990 , area_code = +90 212 (European side) +90 216 (Asian side) , registration_plate = 34 , blank_name_sec2 = GeoTLD , blank_i ...

. Asalache left the property to the National Trust in his will. They accepted the property, subject to raising an endowment of £3–5 million for its maintenance, as they considered it a building:

Visiting

Following major conservation work, in 2013 the National Trust began pre-booked guided tours of the house. These have proved "very popular".

External links

Official website - National Trust Information

References

{{London museums National Trust properties in London Houses in the London Borough of Lambeth Historic house museums in London Visionary environments Museums in the London Borough of Lambeth Museums established in 2013 Georgian architecture in London