The bones of Bolton Street

The first thing we did on Bolton Street was stop and look at what was already there. Brick laid in every bond the last two centuries could manage. Granite kerbs worn into shallow dips by cartwheels. A technical college that taught the city its trades, and a charity that has looked after its older neighbours from the same door for decades.

The temptation on a street like this is to arrive with something shiny, or else to build a pastiche of the Georgian city a few doors east. We did neither. The Bolton is unmistakably new, in brick, with a deep window grid that owes more to a workshop than a drawing room — and it holds the line of the street rather than stepping back from it.

Inside, the argument was about size. We chose to build more rooms and make each one smaller, then spend the difference on the things you feel at eleven at night: acoustic separation, heavy curtains, a mattress worth the money, and ironmongery that gets better with ten thousand uses.