Our ‘Open House’ series brings our sales listings to life with a visit to the current owners of some of the homes we have for sale. Here, we speak to actor Siân Phillips about her long love affair with London at her home just off Brick Lane, currently for sale.

Siân: “I fell in love with London the second I set foot on the platform at Paddington. I had arrived from Wales to start training at RADA and I remember thinking that I had come to the best place in the world.

“I arrived in the mid-1950s and, because I was so young, I just loved the shabbiness of it all, before London began to be smartened up. I lived everywhere when I was studying – a different place every term.

“At one point I lived in splendour on the ground floor of a house on Ladbroke Square. I had the entire floor to myself for two pounds seventy a week. Those were the heydays for students.

“I loved Hampstead when I first moved there in 1960. It was like a village, full of little old shops, people who had been there forever and artists, writers and students. It had great charm.

“I can’t count how many times I’ve moved. I never move because I don’t like where I am – I’ve loved all of it – I just like London so much that I want a different neighbourhood to get acquainted with, oh, perhaps every eight years or so.

“Before this I was, for the third time, in Islington, and, for the first time, I had a view – a panoramic one across the whole of the city. It was wonderful but the building had every horrid architectural feature known to the nineties.

“I only moved in there because I was gazumped on somewhere in Lancaster Gate. I had four days to find somewhere, and I did. Shortly after getting settled in I decided to move again.

“I saw the floorplan for this house over someone’s shoulder in Angel, Islington. I thought, gosh, that looks so practical and easy. And it’s true, the design of this house makes it very easy to live in.

“When I first came to view the place I fell in love with it. Mostly because of the staircase, which is divine – it had to be lowered into the building as one piece. It must have been a day of bated breaths.

“I love seeing the staircase every morning when I come out of my bedroom. To see it cheers me up because it’s so pretty and sculptural.

“The staircase leads up from a big metal front door, which I had graffitied by a very chic street artist and sign specialist. There are no windows down there so as you ascend the stairs you come up into the light, which fills the living areas.

“I’ve lived all over London but the community around Brick Lane is the most villagey of any neighbourhood I’ve ever experienced. It’s quite amazing.

“Within a week I had somewhere to leave my keys, somewhere to leave my shopping and someone to help me with my groceries, just by meeting people on the street, talking to neighbours. It’s very unusual in London.

“I’ve enjoyed living here enormously and I don’t want to move too far away – I was thinking the Barbican. It’s a building that I hated at first, strangely. I remember being in Hampstead and seeing those towers going up and thinking, god that’s hideous. But I love it now, especially the gardens.

“Home for me is a wonderful place to take stock. My life is very haphazard and there’s no routine, never has been. I’m writing something for a deadline, I’ve got lines to learn, a script to get familiar with, or I’m away, sometime for six months at a time.

“Home is a place to come back to at the end of each adventure. It’s a safe place and, although I’m more than happy to be in a strange place every week, I don’t think I’d be very content if I didn’t have a place to return to.”