A handsome family home, now in residence with Iris & Rowan Pelletier. Notes from neighbours, friends and the people who came before — collected here as part of the listing record.
Plate 01 · ExteriorSouth-facing kitchen, a hall with light all afternoon, and a small porch out the front where you can leave your boots. The ✕ marks the threshold — the place every note in this listing was, in a sense, addressed to.
“A small Victorian terrace in the north end of Halifax, found on a Sunday in March, signed for in April, moved into on a Tuesday. The kettle is on; come over.”
Listed · 12 May 2026
Statements collected from neighbours, the previous owners, and friends who knew the house before Iris & Rowan Pelletier. Numbered in the order they came in.
Rowan — your mum and I bought our first house at almost exactly your age, and I remember the first night we slept in it: I lay awake convinced we'd made a terrible mistake, and your mum was already planning the herb garden in the side bed. A house becomes a home in roughly four Tuesdays. Don't rush it. Hang the kitchen pictures last. Welcome, both of you. Send the address — we'll send a kettle.
Iris and Rowan — I am writing this on the morning I am handing you the keys. Forty-two years in this house. Three things to know. (1) The boiler in the airing cupboard sounds, in February, exactly like a small angry man clearing his throat. It is fine. It has done this since 1991. (2) The blackbird that nests in the cherry tree out the back has been there longer than I have. Please leave the branch on the south side. (3) The floor in the smallest bedroom slopes very slightly toward the window. We always called it the cradle. With love and the warmest welcome, Hazel.
My darlings. The thing your father did not tell you is that, on our first night in the house on Beech Avenue, I cried for forty minutes about the curtains and he made tea and said nothing useful. Forty-three years later, I would not change a curtain or a tea. Iris — welcome to the family of badly-lit kitchens and brilliantly-lit gardens. We love you. Sunday phone calls, please. xxx Mum.
Iris, Rowan — the new place looks like it has been waiting for you. Two things you should know before the first Tuesday is over: the front door sticks in damp weather and the trick is to lift slightly while you turn the key. The corner shop on Mulberry — three streets up — does the best bread in the north end, but only on Wednesdays and Saturdays, and only before noon. We loved being your neighbours. We will visit. With love, the Donnellys.
Iris my love — I will say what I always say, which is that you have always known how to walk into a room and rearrange it gently for the better. The house is so lucky. Three small wishes for the new place: that your mornings be slow, that the dinner parties be long, and that the cat finds her favourite radiator within the first week. I am coming up the second weekend you have a kettle and a sofa, in that order. With every kind of love. Sof.
Welcome to Hazel Lane! From the family two doors down. The bin day is Thursday — pink for recycling, black for general, brown for garden waste, easy to forget the brown one. There is a small fox who walks down the lane at about 5am — she is harmless but very confident. Knock at any hour. The kettle is on, the kids are loud, the soup is, more often than not, leftover from Sunday. Welcome, both of you. — Yasmin, Sami, and the kids.
Rowan + Iris — the house is amazing. I am calling dibs on the smallest bedroom for whenever I visit. (I will bring beer. And probably break something. It's the contract.) Wishing you both the slowest first month possible. The kind of first month where the only thing on the calendar is unpacking the kitchen and arguing about where the prints go. Love you both. F.
Iris and Rowan, my dears. A piece of advice from someone who has moved house seven times and never enjoyed any of them: don't try to make it perfect on the first night. Make it warm. The boxes can wait. Order the food. Sit on the floor of the kitchen with a glass of something and look at the room. The house will tell you, over the next month or so, where everything wants to go. Trust it. (And: I am sending sourdough on Wednesday. It will arrive in a tin. Eat it the same day.) — Mum V.
Iris — the trick to the upstairs radiator (the one in the spare room) is to bleed it within the first week. The trick to the new house, more broadly, is the same trick as the old one: be very kind to each other in the very first month, because every house feels strange before it feels like home. You'll be fine. You'll be more than fine. Bring the housewarming forward — we want to come, we want to bring wine, we want to see the kitchen. xx A.
Iris, my love. I taught you how to fold linen and how to make a pot of soup that lasts a week, and you have taught me, in return, that a home is mostly about who is welcome there. You have made every flat you have lived in feel like somewhere I wanted to stay. This house is going to be the easiest one yet, because you and Rowan have, by now, very good practice. One thing — hang the smaller paintings first, in the rooms you walk through most. Save the big ones until you have lived in the house for a month. Big paintings need to know which wall they belong to. With love, Aunty Bryony.
From the people who carried the sofa up the stairs at the wrong angle three times — congratulations on the keys. We loved the day. The pizza in the garden was, frankly, the best housewarming we have been to. One small request: when you decide where the bookshelves go, call us. We will bring a drill, two opinions about levelling, and a flask of coffee. Welcome to the new house. — Sam, Otis & the small one.
Iris, Rowan — eight viewings, three offers, one very long Sunday in March. I knew the house was yours the moment Iris asked about the south-facing window in the kitchen rather than the square footage. You bought a house. You found a home. That distinction matters to me. Many years of happiness to you both, from the office at the top of Argyle Street. — JW.
We weren't looking, exactly. We had a list of things we wanted in a house and another list of things we'd compromise on, and we had been losing politely at viewings since January. And then on a Sunday in March, the realtor sent through a listing she said she had been holding back for us — a small Victorian terrace on a quiet street in the north end, built in 1898, with one south-facing window in the kitchen that hit the table at exactly four in the afternoon.
We stayed too long at the viewing. We came back twice. We put in an offer on the Tuesday and heard yes on the Wednesday, and the four weeks between then and moving day were the longest four weeks of our adult lives — counting boxes, naming rooms we hadn't lived in yet, lying awake at 2am running through which of our friends had drills.
The boxes are mostly in the right rooms. The kettle is on the counter, which is the only thing it really needed to be. There is a list of things to fix taped to the inside of the cupboard door, and a smaller list of things to plant taped underneath it. We're going to be very slow about all of it. Come over. The door is open. Bring whatever you have in the fridge.
With love, from the kitchen table at 14 Hazel Lane —
“May the house keep you well, may the kettle never go cold, may every Tuesday in it feel like the first one.”
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