Time capsule home: punk rock meets retro Americana in this south London house where time stopped in 1972
“My visual world finishes around about 1972,” says graphic designer and writer Julian Balme. “The only thing that persevered longer than that was music.”
At the Streatham home he has lived in for 32 years, a vintage Esso petrol pump lamp graces one of the many bookshelves, Arne Jacobsen-inspired chairs surround the dining table and a 1959 Rock-Ola jukebox presides over one corner of the living room.
“There’s not a thing in the house that is there for the sake of it,” he says. “Everything has a story.” There is certainly a story attached to the large The Clash poster on one wall. First arriving in London just days before 1976’s seminal 100 Club Punk Festival, design student Balme quickly found himself immersed in the city’s exploding punk rock scene.
Within a few short years he was designing record covers for The Clash, Madness and Adam Ant.
Having made his name dealing in the shockingly new, later years have seen Balme indulge his passion for the past. “I love old cars,” he says. “Me and a friend started racing in 1985 and were obsessed with effectively recreating period photographs. We raced a 1965 car so we wanted everything around it to be 1965. I would race in loafers rather than racing boots.”
Balme raced at the very first Goodwood Revival meeting and now produces print publications for the classic car world. This automotive obsession is even the reason he first fell in love with the house. “I didn’t even know where Streatham was, let alone know how to spell it,” recalls Balme. “But I used to race against a chap who lived four doors down from here and he invited us over for supper one weekend. I was just agog at the garage space he had.”
“At the time I bought it in 1989, I couldn’t have afforded this house probably anywhere else in London. The only thing Streatham was famous for then was Cynthia Payne and drugs. It has changed enormously for the better.”
Now on sale for £1.25 million through Knight Frank, the four-bedroom home has a triple garage and workshop area, which currently houses Balme’s 1940 Lincoln Continental – “I feel a complete charlatan owning it, it’s such a glamorous car” – and a 1964 Ford Galaxie. “I bought it off a little old lady in Redondo Beach, California, called Eugena Bond. I’ve had so many adventures in that car.”
Many of those were alongside Balme’s late wife, Karen, who died seven years ago. He recalls how they would drive around the US together and that a shared love of post-war Americana shaped the design of their south London home.
“All the best architects and graphic designers were doing their thing in America,” says Balme. “There was such a huge, huge feeling of optimism in America post-war that we just didn’t have here, running under austerity. People were lucky enough to have a bicycle, let alone two cars.
“Early Sixties British TV and film interiors were also quite influential. We didn’t want to destroy too much of the house. Ours is the most original in the row. We took eight doors out of this place, but it still has all the original light switches and all of the original door handles from 1928.”
Alongside racy red and yellow, a vivid cyan runs through the house, from the front door to the living room and up to the roof terrace. “I think it’s actually a British person’s idea of what an American Fifties colour was,” Balme says.
“In the States, it probably would have been lighter, a more pastely shade. I wanted it to be dark enough so that the white woodwork would pop. The tartan wallpaper was an early Sixties kind of thing, but also I had a thing about Scottish hotels.
And then, of course, there was a lot of tartan involved in early Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren punk clothing as well. It’s not just one thing that informs those decisions, it’s all manner of them.”
Balme is now embarking on a whole new era. He is moving to the West Country with his new partner — a decision made pre-pandemic, but lamentably not possible until now.
“I don’t think I’ve actually taken an old car out in London for a long, long time,” he says. “Without wishing to sound like Victor Meldrew, there are 54 speed bumps between here and the Blackwall Tunnel. If I’ve only got 10 years to run around in old cars, then I’m gonna do it.”