Life, Art and Parties: A Home with Soul
Words by Hannah Nixon
“I love a secret door,” declares Jane Scheinmann as she nimbly pops open a passageway she created from the bedroom into her voluminous dressing room. Once the home of celebrated author Anthony Horowitz and his family, Wolseley Road in Crouch End was passed on to Jane and her photographer husband David, along with their three young daughters, over two decades ago.
A vibrant warren of rooms filled with character and accoutrements from the colourful lives they lead, the house is full of playful moments. Case in point is the gigantic sun that hangs over the fireplace, a prop from a Tears for Fears album cover that David shot or the cast of Anthony’s hand (albeit missing its pinky finger) that greets you as you enter.
Now, as the house looks for a new custodian, they sat down with us to reflect on living and working in a home filled with soul, secret doorways and the legendary parties they’ve hosted there.
David: I was just absent mindedly leafing through one of those glossy estate agent brochures. Everything just happened in a flash. We arrived at 8am, met the agent, and walked in and as we reached the stairs, we could see into the rooms, and I turned to Jane and said, “This is it. This is the one.”
I knew I had to act fast. I asked the agent, ‘What do we have to do to secure it?’ They said, ‘Don’t mess around – offer the asking price.’ I said, ‘Okay, but can we meet the owners? I want to connect with them’, so that’s how we ended up having dinner with Anthony and his wife Jill.
Jane: No, we had dinner with them while we were in the process of the sale. I think halfway through Anthony wasn’t sure that he wanted to sell. David is a photographer and filmmaker and of course we had our three children as well, and they saw that we were going to have a similar life here.
David: He also left us a shelf full of his published novels when they moved. It’s a traditional we’d like to continue, so we’re going to leave them for the new owners.
Jane: We had the removal man come and unpack. I had my nine month old at the time and it was under a week after we’d moved in that we left for LA the first time. It was crazy. Then we spent nine months of each year in LA, and then came back here for three months in the summer. We lived in a classic clapperboard house on the beach in Santa Monica, very close to Venice Beach.
David: That was actually Nick Broomfield’s house. Jane Fonda had also lived there in the 1970s.
Jane: Living in LA was quite the tonic for the cynical Northern girl that I was. Actually, I think spending all that time there was the right amount, it was full, rich, and immersive.
David: What we discovered in LA, because everything was so spread out, was that families naturally found each other and gravitated together. We ended up with an amazing social life.
Jane: I think we’ve had four major parties here over the years and when I say major, I mean over a hundred people. One was David’s 50th – we had the whole kitchen island covered in sushi, with a couple of ‘sushi monsters’ wandering around, snorting it up.
The girls all had coming-of-age parties. Ruby’s, we themed it like a mini Glastonbury, so we moved sofas and furniture outside. It was one of those weekends, about 25 degrees and so hot. We had a photo booth, a lady doing glitter faces for the kids… it just went on and on.
David still has some of the props from his work around the house. That sun is actually a prop from a Tears for Fears album cover that David shot. He also had a set of life-size angel wings, which we put up in the garden that night for photos. I don’t even remember the party finishing, but I do remember sitting on the sofa outside the next morning in the sun, feeling pretty ropey, just thinking, ‘WOW’”
Jane: It’s a great entertaining space. Our table has hosted many, many dinners. David managed to get it for about £300. He drove his Mercedes to Kent, strapped it to the roof and drove it back.
Jane: The encaustic tiles on the floor in the kitchen for example. We fell in love with them, the idea, the pattern, everything. We worked with a company in Spain and on David’s computer, we chose all the colors for the tiles. The pattern is my design. David took photographs of it, and we gave that to the tile company as the plan. Even though it looks a bit random, there’s quite a bit of thought put in, like arranging four tiles together to give the eye a little rest. It’s a labor of love.
Jane: I think this house has a real soul. When people come here, almost everyone says, after more than a cup of coffee, how comfortable they feel and how the house seems to envelop them. It’s got a gut, a soul. It’s an old girl, this house and it’s been very kind to us.
David: I mean, for 50 years, the creativity that’s come out of this place; the TV shows, the films, the books and that’s just Anthony Horowitz. I’ve done fashion shoots, read scripts, taken plenty of pictures, all made, shot, or produced here. So it really has this incredible creative heritage.
Jane: We’ve been incredibly happy here. This house has been a gift and it’ll be nice to pass it on.
Thanks to Jane and David for showing us around their incredible home.
