Streatley sits on the Berkshire bank opposite Goring, where the Thames cuts through the chalk of the Goring Gap. It is a small village with a disproportionate amount of difficult, interesting building stock: flint and brick cottages, substantial Victorian houses along the Reading Road, converted farm buildings on the downs above, and a handful of striking modern houses built into the hillside.
We are fifteen minutes away over the bridge, so Streatley is well inside the area we cover from the Ipsden workshop. Being close matters in a village where lanes are narrow, driveways are short and the practical question of getting a two-metre carcass through a cottage door is a genuine design constraint rather than an afterthought.
Most of the enquiries we get from Streatley involve making a period room work for modern life without stripping out its character, wardrobes in a cottage bedroom with a sloping ceiling, a media wall in a room with a working fireplace, panelling on a stairwell with no two walls parallel. That is joinery, not furniture assembly, and it starts with measuring the room honestly.
