One day, out of the blue, Anthony Bishop had a brainwave, says his sister Lindsey Wislocki. They had already agreed that rather than sell the family home following their parents’ deaths, Anthony would move into it with his daughter Lily, aged seven.
“Then Anthony said, what would be nicer is if you could knock it down and build two houses, one for you and one for me,” says Lindsey, an architect.
‘Crazy’, thought Lindsey. Not, however, because of the idea of living in a semi next door to Anthony and Lily – the siblings had bantered about the possibility in the past. Together with their brother Neil, Anthony’s twin, they were a close family, and had been brought up by their parents, Brian and Valerie, in the family home, a detached, four-bedroom, 1930s chalet bungalow in Leigh-on-Sea in Essex.
Neil, Lindsey and her husband John, 59, all liked Anthony’s suggestion. “We’re very close and it made perfect sense,” says Lindsey. “We thought, how lovely to be living close and to share Lily growing up. I thought ‘crazy’ because we might have a battle with the planners.”