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Crossing the river in Putney in the 1960s with her husband, a house caught Meredith Daneman’s attention.
It was a Victorian Arts and Crafts building, painted yellow with leaded, pale stained-glass windows at the front and grand, full-height ones at the back.
Its rear garden ran all the way down to the Thames, which reminded her of her upbringing on Sydney Harbour. “It just had a magical air about it,” says Meredith. “I said: ‘That’s the one I want.’”
In 1975, a decade later, the house finally came on the market. “I went: ‘Oh my god, I’ve got to go and see this.’”
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Meredith’s husband, the late actor Paul Daneman, was touring at the time, so she went to view the property with a friend.
Her first assumption was that the owners, one of whom was showing her around, must be extremely wealthy: there were original paintings by the acclaimed Australian artist Sidney Nolan on the walls.
“I looked on my page, and the name Nolan was there. I realised that I was in Sidney Nolan’s house, and I was talking to Cynthia Nolan, who was his wife.”
In fact, the house had a long artistic history, stretching back before the Nolans. In the 1920s, it was a stained glass studio, home to Joan Howson and Caroline Townshend, who were notable exponents of the Arts and Crafts movement.
Townshend, a Suffragette, was the cousin of the wife of George Bernard Shaw, who had been known to row across the Thames to the house’s garden.
Sidney and Cynthia Nolan —a travel writer and novelist— had bought the house in the 1960s.
Nolan had painted from his studio on the house’s top floor, and the property had been visited by the likes of novelist Patrick White, ballet dancer and choreographer Kenneth MacMillan and Benjamin Britten, the composer and pianist.
Cynthia Nolan, therefore, was adamant that this artistic legacy should continue. “She would hardly let me in the door without knowing who I was. She said that she couldn’t just sell it to anyone. She could only sell it to people in the world of the arts.”
Luckily, Meredith, a Royal Ballet dancer and writer, fit the bill. Better still, they shared the same agent, and had both been born in Tasmania.
“I passed the test,” says Meredith. “She said: ‘I’ll only let you buy it if you promise to write a novel here.’”
There was another catch: the property was actually comprised of two neighbouring houses, but the Danemans only needed one.
“[Cynthia Nolan] said: ‘Well, you must know somebody.’ I thought for a while, and I said: ‘Maybe my mother might come.’ She replied: ‘Let’s get her on the phone.’”
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Before the day was out, Meredith had agreed to buy the house —unbeknownst to Paul— and had convinced her ageing mother to move from Adelaide to London to live next door.
“As soon as I saw the river, I offered the asking price,” she says. “I’ve never been more pleased to have acquired it.”
The two houses on Putney’s Deodar Road have been Meredith’s home for the past 50 years. At first, both her mother and sister occupied number 79, while Meredith, Paul and their two young daughters took 81.
“It was surprisingly wonderful,” she says. “My husband liked my mother a great deal. She always had a great soft spot for actors – and chiefly him.”
When Meredith’s mother died in 1986, the Danemans spread themselves across both houses. In 2001, after Paul passed away, Meredith converted the houses into three separate flats, taking “the lion’s share” for herself across the ground and first floors, and creating a two-bedroom, penthouse-style flat on the top floor with a roof garden.
To the side of the building, covering the ground floor and some of the basement, she constructed a smaller, 837 square foot apartment.
“When my husband died, I knew I had to do something. I had to shrink my life in some way, or expand it. I decided that I would make it into apartments and try and support myself in that way,” says Meredith.
“The house has been a strangely beneficial goldmine to me, and I’m very grateful to it.”
Today, the house retains the same format, with each of the properties having its own title deeds.
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Meredith’s flat, number 81, covers 3,214 square feet, with 180-degree views across the Thames, and a rear garden that meets the river.
In total across the three flats, there are eight bedrooms and 5,764 square feet of space. A blue plaque outside, added in 2022, commemorates Sidney Nolan.
Over the last half-century, the house has formed the background of the family’s life. Meredith’s daughter’s wedding reception was held at the house, with she and her husband collected in a boat from the bottom of the garden.
“She climbed over the wall in her wedding dress, and they were like the Owl and the Pussycat, circling out into the river with everybody cheering and sending fireworks after them.”
Some years ago, the house was spotted by helicopter by a TV production company, who noticed its double aspect, big garden and width, compared to the other houses on the street.
Since then, it has been used as a film location for Silent Witness, Diary of a Call Girl, Strike, Breeders and Denial, amongst others. “Once or twice I’ve been watching something and I think: ‘Oh god, that’s my house.’”
True to her promise to Cynthia Nolan, Meredith wrote four of her books from the house, including her biography of the ballerina Margot Fonteyn. Her study overlooks the river.
“It’s a horizon, really, looking out and being able to see so far,” she says.
“Every day, I look out of the window and it excites me anew to look at the life on the river: the cranes, the birds and the beautiful tree at the end of the garden which comes in and out of leaf and is sort of noble and spectacular.”
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Now, though, Meredith is in her 80s, and the time has come to sell. The property is on the market with Savills for £9.95 million.
Meredith is unsure what the future holds – whether she will move to Bath, where her youngest daughter lives, or remain in London, where she can still “immerse myself in the things that I originally fell in love with.”
Savills are marketing the property as a “sublime waterfront home ready for its next chapter”, with potential appeal to families or individuals looking to make use of its ownership structure.
Meredith, though, shares Cynthia Nolan’s wish that the house’s artistic ownership will continue. “It certainly has a creative spirit about it.”
“It’s just been such a focus of life. The worst thing about leaving here is that I barely know who I am without the house. The house has become a sort of identity to me,” she says.
“I’ve always thought that property is hugely important; that houses have souls and that you have to buy from the heart, because that’s where you’re going to get up every morning…I never stop being grateful for the great privilege it has been to live here.”
