Decorating Florence Street

Florence Street is a quiet residential street in Barnsbury, one of Islington's most coveted Victorian neighbourhoods, tucked between the handsome Georgian and early-Victorian terraces of Liverpool Road and the leafy squares of the Barnsbury Conservation Area. The street is lined with modest two- and three-storey Victorian terraces in yellow London stock brick, built in the 1860s and 1870s to house the skilled artisans and clerks who made up the backbone of Victorian Islington's population. Today the street is popular with young professional families attracted by its calm character and proximity to Upper Street's restaurants and the wide open spaces of Highbury Fields.

The yellow stock brick of Florence Street's Victorian terraces is a defining feature of the Barnsbury Conservation Area and is generally left unpainted, but painted render, stucco bay windows and decorative brick dressings require regular maintenance using masonry paints that are sympathetic to the warm honey tones of the original fabric. Interior projects frequently involve stripping back layers of twentieth-century decoration to reveal original Victorian plasterwork, joinery and tiled hallway floors.