Priory Cottage in Islington, London, was more than a house and a home. To sell it was a wrench; to buy a property in Japan was a weird and wonderful adventure.
The cottage has a special place in FT history because it was the home of JDF Jones, the brilliant foreign editor and founding editor of FT Weekend.
In the 1970s he added an extension to the 1798 house — at the front it blended with the 18th-century brick structure to create a three-storey cottage; at the back it added a new dimension. His pride and joy was a sloping glass roof that crowned a long first-floor drawing room. JDF proudly laid a floor of black Welsh slate that, brightened with an oriental rug, made the room magnificent for entertaining.