How it all began

March 2010.  We had been living together in Paul's place for just under a year. 

Paul's place

The extension was complete and the newly installed kitchen (by Alexander Lewis http://www.alexanderlewis.com/) was stunning.

Kitchen at Paul's Place

We now had time to relax and enjoy living together, only it wasn't long before we both started to get itchy feet and were regularly talking about a new project.  Do we move?, do we stay?, do we buy another place to rent?, do we stay in Leicester?   We kept our options open and started to look at properties in and around Knighton, Stoneygate, Clarendon Park. We loved this part of Leicester and knew this is where we wanted to be.

We had been looking on http://www.rightmove.co.uk/ and a few properties caught our attention on Southernay Road, Knighton Church Road, Knighton Road but upon closer inspection, didn't excite us or fitted what we were looking for.  To be fair, we were not sure what we were exactly looking for, but we hoped we would know when we found it.

Paul spotted a property on Rightmove for sale on Stoneygate Road but the details were very vague and the picture of the house wasn't great. The description read:

"Deceptively spacious peiod Victorian Villa, located within the heart of the desirable residential suburb of Stoneygate.  Originally designed by local architect Stockdale Harrison circa 1869 in a gothic revival style, the porperty still retains many of these original characteristics.  Currently the property has been partially converted into two good sized flats but could easily be converted back to a spacious family home.  Offering a weath of character features, internal viewings are highly recommended to fully appreicated".

Of course, we had to go and take a look and with no time to spare, that evening, we took a steady stroll round to Stoneygate Road.

We walked along Stoneygate Road from Stoughton Drive and when we walked around the corner and caught sight of the house, the only thing we could see were trees, lots of them! Upon closer inspection of the house through the trees, the house gave off this aura of sheer size.  It took us a while to walk around the boundaries of the house and it was quite difficult to work out where the house started and ended.  We were both taken in by the house and knew we had to organise an internal viewing.