Holding time lightly in Edgecliff.

“It was a highly practical family house,” Tom says. “At the time, it suited everything we needed. Over the years, it just stayed with us as life changed around it.”

That idea - of a house persevering - becomes central to how 10 High Street is understood today. Not fixed, but faithful. Not static, but quietly adaptive.

The home’s architecture supports that evolution without insisting on it. More than 7m wide, with a north-to-rear aspect that pulls light deep into the interiors, it opens across a sequence of living, dining, family and sunroom spaces. Each one distinct, yet loosely connected.

All renovations along the way were less reinvention, more realignment.

As the family shifted into new phases - children growing, returning, expanding into blended family life - the house moved with them. Walls were rethought. The kitchen relocated into a more social position. Open-plan living was introduced not as a trend, but as a way of restoring connection.

“We opened the home into a large living space so it could better support gathering and day-to-day interaction,” Tom says. “It just needed to reflect how we were actually living in it.”

Upstairs, the transformation was more personal. What had once been a more open, studio-like space evolved into a private master suite, complete with walk-in robe and an additional room that became Anita’s art studio.

“It wasn’t about changing the house for the sake of it,” Tom says. “It was about making it work for a different eras of life.”

For Anita, these stages have been deeply intertwined with art - not as decoration, but as presence.

“I have always loved being surrounded by art,” Anita says. “It brings warmth and personality into a space. It makes a house feel like it has its own story. Art doesn’t just sit in a room. It changes how you move through it.”

Beyond the interiors and into the garden, north-facing light defines much of the daily rhythm. The balcony, in particular, has become a kind of informal threshold between inside and out - a place for morning coffee, late conversation, and the quiet in-between moments.

Over time, the design changes have been welcoming to the home’s people - children returning as adults, grandchildren arriving into a space already rich with memory, and extended family passing through for weekends that blur into longer stays.

“The home has been the setting for all of it,” Tom says. “It was where the children grew up, and then where they came back to. It’s always been a place people return to.”

The neighbourhood itself has evolved alongside the house. Edgecliff and Woollahra have shifted in texture over the decades, yet much of their rhythm remains intact. Queen Street still anchors daily life. Trumper Park still offers its quiet, green interruption to the city. Cafés and pubs come and go, but the pattern of movement - walking, stopping, returning - remains familiar.

“We’ve always been able to walk everywhere,” Anita says. “That ease of access became part of how we lived. It shaped the rhythm of the days.”

In preparation for a new chapter, when asked what will be missed most, the answer is not a room, nor a feature, nor even a view. Just “togetherness”.

That’s what these long-held homes represent - the living sequence. They never ask to be centre of attention, only to be present - again and again - as life quietly unfolds within.

View the listing: 10 High Street, Edgecliff