A house with all the charm of the Cotswolds... in an urban suburb of Tokyo

The red-brick, Victorian-style home has traditional sash windows, a chimney and a carriage light in the porch, with barley twist spindles on the staircase. A glance in any direction outside the heavy front door, however, reveals a very different cityscape.

Mariko Kosaka’s home is set amid the cramped urban quarters of west ­Tokyo, less than a mile from the frenetic streets of Shibuya, and is surrounded by unsightly Japanese apartment blocks and generic houses.

Kosaka, 50, has spent precisely one day in Britain, visiting London on a day trip from Paris with her husband, who works for a subway company in Tokyo, before they set about building their dream home in 2006. “I found a book about Victorian-style buildings, design and interior decoration, and as soon as I saw some of the houses I knew that I wanted to live in a British home,” she says. “I just loved the style immediately.”