100 years is an awful long time for a house to be abandoned. You might imagine that after so long, its interiors would be unsalvageable, damaged by vandals, Mother Nature and the ever-ticking hand of the clock. Yet somehow, the historic Malpaquet House on London?s Mile End Road survived such a fate, enabling a stunning restoration that highlights all of its beautiful original features.

For all those decades, passersby would walk past its crumbling exterior wondering why such a beautiful structure had been left to deteriorate, as overgrown jasmine and wisteria obscured its facade. Its last recorded inhabitants left in 1895, and in the meantime, the five-bedroom house stood as a veritable time capsule. The lack of 20th-century inhabitants spared it from inevitable renovations that would likely have wiped out all of its charm. When Spitalfields Trust rescued it in 1997, Malpaquet House still boasted all of its original brick, iron railings, stone eagle statues, wooden trim and other interior and exterior features. It was built in 1741, and many of its interiors looked as if no time had passed at all, with walls still painted arsenic-green or covered in carved paneling.

The last time it underwent any modernization was back in 1827. The final 19th century owners had divided it up into lodgings and shops, and then it began its hundred-year incarnation as a crumbling storage space. But in 1998, the 275-year-old East London ruin was purchased by British historian Tim Knox and l...