When Architect Sam Causer bought a crumbling Georgian townhouse in Margate in 2015, it had spent decades as a solicitor's storage facility. What he has done with it since is not, by his own definition, a renovation. Guided by SPAB principles of light-touch conservation, this is the story of a 200-year-old home — and an architect who decided that every layer of its history was worth keeping.

A full restoration and contemporary extension to a Victorian terrace in Finsbury Park — Lothair Road is the kind of project that rewards the discipline of doing things properly. Every original detail that could be salvaged was, and the new rear addition provides the additional space the house always needed, without compromising what made it worth restoring in the first place.