A hidden gem of carved wood panelling is now open to the public. The unassuming Georgian terraced house at 575 Wandsworth Road, built in 1819, was for two decades the canvas of Kenyan-born poet, novelist and civil servant Khadambi Asalache. When he bought the dilapidated property in 1981 for less than the asking price of £31,000, it had been occupied by squatters and was riddled with damp. What emerged from that unpromising start is a complete interior transformed by hand-carved fretwork, now preserved by the National Trust and available for pre-booked tours from May 2026.
The accidental masterpiece
Asalache’s project began as a practical fix. To disguise the damp patches in the basement dining room, he clad the wall with reclaimed floorboards salvaged from a local house renovation. Plain wood, he decided, needed decoration – so he decorated it. That single act snowballed into an undertaking that lasted roughly 20 years, from 1986 until his death in 2006. Using reclaimed pine doors and floorboards rescued from skips, Asalache single-handedly carved intricate fretwork that spread across nearly every surface of the house.
The result has been described as an exercise in horror vacui – a fear of empty spaces. Rooms are dense with birds, dancers, flowers, animals, geometric patterns and scenes of African life, all cut into the wood by a hand that was skilled but not formally expert. Asalache also incorporated his collection of 19th-century English lustreware, illustrations of African landscapes and personal artefacts into the decor. He even hand-painted some of the floors. The interior became an intensely personal world, one he shared with his partner, Scottish basket-maker Susie Thomson, whom he met in 1989.
Wood carving with a world of influences
Asalache was a polymath. Born in Kaimosi, Kenya, in 1935 as the eldest child of a local chief, he studied architecture at the Royal Technical College in Nairobi and fine art in Rome, Geneva and Vienna before earning an MPhil in philosophy of mathematics from Birkbeck College, London. He moved to Britain in 1960, teaching Swahili at the Berlitz School and working for the BBC African Service before becoming a civil servant at HM Treasury. His literary career included the novel The Calabash of Life (1967), which appeared on school syllabi across Africa, the poetry collection Sunset in Naivasha (1973), and a poem included in The Penguin Book of Modern African Poetry. He also wrote and produced an episode of the BBC series Danger Man.
That breadth of experience infused his carving. The motifs that cover 575 Wandsworth Road draw on traditional African houses, Moorish architecture from Andalusia – especially the Great Mosque of Cordoba and the Alhambra in Granada – and Ottoman designs from Damascus and Istanbul. The result is a fusion that the National Trust, which accepted the property in 2010, called “a great work of art and an important part of our built heritage”. An endowment of £3–5 million was required to maintain it.
Visiting the hidden gem
Tours of 575 Wandsworth Road will resume twice a week on Wednesdays and Thursdays from 6th May 2026. The National Trust advises that tours are also available on Thursdays and Fridays at 11am, 1pm and 3pm from May to October, though the house is currently closed for essential conservation and will reopen in May 2026. Entry costs £13 for adults and £6.50 for children aged five to 17, with children under five free. National Trust members can visit free but must still book. Because of the fragility of the interiors, places are strictly limited to six people per tour and must be booked in advance; new tickets are released weekly.
The house is a short walk from Wandsworth Road station on the London Overground; Nine Elms station is also nearby. Visitors can follow in Asalache’s footsteps by taking the 77 bus from Waterloo – the bus stop is Westbury Street – or use routes 87 and 452. There is limited on-street metered parking in the area. Note that there is no door number, so guests may need to count down from neighbouring houses. Photography inside is not permitted. Visitors are asked to remove their outdoor shoes and wear thick-gripped socks or bring rubber-soled slippers to protect the hand-painted floors. The house has limited accessibility due to steps and stairs.
