Words Charlie Monaghan
Photography Thea Caroline Sneve Løvstad

Leah Forsyth-Steel is a woman on the move. Or she was. Having grown up in New Zealand, she lived in Sydney and Melbourne before coming to London and meeting her now husband, Nick Steel, while working at his creative agency. When the business relocated to Amsterdam, the couple went too, but now, after their purchase and refurbishment of an Edwardian house in Walthamstow, they are staying put. “London feels like home to both of us,” Leah says.

For the couple, feeling settled at home is both a literal and figurative consideration. “We like this idea of furniture and objects rooting us,” says Nick. It’s just as well, then, that Leah, along with her business partner, Victoria Spicer, runs Monument, a design store that focuses on furniture and objects chosen for their heft, stature and – in their own words – “permanence”. Here, Leah and Nick tell us how they have configured their home and the things in it to keep them feeling grounded.

Leah: “I am a homemaker by nature. I have lived all over the world and have gone to the lengths of shipping weird things like small ceramic cups along with me to create a sense of home wherever I am.

“I think it goes back to how I was brought up. Before they were together, my parents both used to go mudlarking on the same beach in New Zealand to collect bottles and they continued to collect things when my siblings and I were growing up. It’s probably why I ended up working in museums for a while: I love the act of sourcing and considering something’s story, history, or craftsmanship.”

Nick: “When we came back from Amsterdam, we rented a house on this same street. It was 2019 and Leah was pregnant and we felt we needed to move to an area where we would have community and support. We had heard a lot about Walthamstow and a lot of people had moved this way.

“We wanted to find a site and build a house – we are both architecture geeks. We worked with Studio P on a plan for a very Bauhaus-inspired design, which was super minimal but really practical and liveable, with a lot of open space.

“When we couldn’t find a site in London we looked at Margate and Hertfordshire – all the places people seemed to be moving to. But we would always come back and think, ‘It’s not London.’”

Leah: “Nick grew up here and I moved to the UK to be in London, not anywhere else. Looking elsewhere confirmed that this city is home. At that point Frida, our daughter, was two-and-a-half and the lease was coming up on our flat. We realised what we had in Walthamstow had a great community, was so connected and had loads of pubs and cafes.

“When this house came on the market we were the first to see it because all we had to do was walk down the street. The house hadn’t been touched in 23 years, so it was pretty dated, but we could see its potential. We exchanged in October and had to be in by December, so it was a real sprint to do the work we needed to in time.”

Nick: “I’ve lived in loads of houses like this in London and have always tried to preserve the original details. When Leah suggested we strip everything out I was like, ‘Really?”

Leah: “There are so many perfectly preserved houses around here, we didn’t need to be another one. Stripping out all the architraves, all those borders, all the frilly bits, gave it a sense of space and clean, visual lines. That worked for us because our work lives can be quite stressful, so home is a sanctuary. As much as I like to collect things, I try and keep things very contained and calm.”

Nick: “We also removed a wall in the living room and replastered everywhere. I was so pleased with the result and just thought, ‘Why have I not done this before?’ Home is not just a shelter, it’s a space that should ground you. Every time I come home and sit in the living room or go up to the bedroom, I feel pulled down to earth again.”

Leah: “When we were designing the new build, we wanted clean lines but didn’t want it to feel monastic. I think sometimes when you go too minimal it doesn’t feel very liveable.

“My collection of things is very personal and I’m a real romantic when it comes to home – and we have a child, so in this Edwardian house, we had to find a balance between the space, the objects and the furniture, so that it looked the way we wanted it to but still felt comfortable when we sit down with a cup of tea to watch telly at the end of the day.

“I think people should allow themselves to be really eclectic – whatever makes your heart sing and speaks to you. When Nick’s mum passed away, he wanted to buy some special things to remember her by and one of them was our Jean Prouvé table. It’s timeless, extremely functional and it’s going to last… Our daughter often sits there and scratches the wood, which we have learned to live with and even enjoy.”

Nick: “Again, it’s about having objects that root you. Hopefully, we’ll have that table forever and will ground our family around it. And that’s what furniture and interiors are all about for me: it’s bringing people together and connecting.”

Leah: “That sort of romanticism and philosophy around the value of things is what Monument was founded on. I really believe the success of a small independent brand relies on the founders being true to themselves. And I knew Victoria was the right person to do it with because of our shared love and ideas around these things.

“I’d talked for years about starting something and looked at doing it in Amsterdam, but it didn’t make sense to start it there. Then, when I was on maternity leave in London, Nick encouraged me to go for it while I had a bit of time. We decided to treat it as a great experiment – one which coincided with the pandemic when everyone was obsessed with their home, so it took off.

“Monument is really about choosing pieces for your home that have gravitas. It’s the form, the materials, the things that make you feel something or give you some sense of pleasure. And sometimes giving pleasure is in its function.”

Nick: “Leah’s eye for spotting something good is so tuned finely now. It always was, but the stuff she finds now – and where she finds it – is amazing. She sees everything. I go to her studio and can see everything’s got something about it. It’s really hard to describe exactly what that is. It’s got Leah in it. And I look round the house and the things that she’s bought for it and I think, ‘That is so Leah’. It’s weird. There’s a piece of her in the things that she chooses. And I know that sounds a bit hippyish, but there’s a real sense of something.”