wallpaper is back property · west end— and also a fairly cheap location, a combination that is...

Wallpaper is back

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Homes&Property

Wednesday 17 September 2014

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4 WEDNESDAY 17 SEPTEMBER 2014 EVENING STANDARD

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news: so many homes will need a new railway station

Read Ruth Bloomfield’s full story at homesandproperty.co.uk

CHANCELLOR George Osborne is expected approve plans for a new £190 million station to serve Barking Riverside, one of London’s biggest regeneration zones, as part of his Autumn Statement in December.

The plan to extend the London Overground is strongly backed by Mayor Boris Johnson and would give a huge fillip to the area, which is within the most affordable borough in London — Barking and Dagenham. Average local property prices are just above £250,000 but could rise substantially if the plan for a two-mile extension of the Gospel Oak to Barking line is approved. Work has already started on the Barking Riverside development and there are long-term plans to build 10,800 homes, plus shops, cafés, restau-rants, schools, sports facilities and a church on 443 acres.

Strictly devoted to luxury....

£575,000: chain-free Johnsons Farm in the rural hamlet of Rushall, near Diss in Norfolk, is a listed, four-bedroom farmhouse crammed with beams and character, in four acres of gardens and paddocks. It comes with a big detached barn you could convert to a holiday let or a riding school, stable blocks, two workshops — also ripe for conversion — and two more acres available to buy. Through Abbotts.

£4.75 million: seven-bedroom Heron Lodge is set in 12 acres of Berkshire, just outside the well-heeled village of Mortimer. Being newly built, it offers Queen Anne looks across 11,000sq ft of living space, without the tiresome threat of dry rot, and with a bespoke kitchen, a grand conservatory and a blank-canvas basement ready to convert into a gym and spa. Outside has a pool, parkland views, paddocks and stables. Yours through Savills.

Trophy buy of the week it’s new — with old-world charm

London buy of the week a Clapham flat near Battersea’s bright lights

Life changer a new start in rural bliss? Watch Diss space

FROM mansions with cavernous spaces perfect for storing wine, to modern, all-glass displays to show off your collection — or secret cellars to hide it — we find UK homes on the market for people who love their wine and adore entertaining.

Visit homesandproperty.co.uk/buyoftheweekclap

£750,000: if you love light, bright, open spaces, this Clapham flat is for you. Heated floor tiles flow through the 30ft open-plan living room, generous sitting and dining areas and high-spec kitchen, making a fabulous entertaining space that’s illuminated by a row of roof lights and folding glass doors to a decked garden. One of the

two double bedrooms has fitted wardrobes and a bay window, there’s a mosaic-tiled bathroom, and a cellar for storage. Clapham Common and the shops and bars of Battersea Rise are close by. Through Douglas & Gordon.

Visit homesandproperty.co.uk/lifechangerrush

Property searchBig future: City

East will be part of the Barking Riverside development, one of London’s biggest regeneration zones, with plans for 10,800 homes

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SHOWCASING more than 350 leading British and international luxury design brands, Decorex International is a trade show for the interior design stars setting the style agenda for our homes. We previewthe season’s hottest new interiors trends.

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Setting the design agenda: Decorex 2014 Homes with fabulous wine cellars

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EVENING STANDARD WEDNESDAY 17 SEPTEMBER 2014 5

Vote for Winnie and buy a flat here

Got some gossip? Tweet @amiranews

WINSTON CHURCHILL’S much-loved family home, Chartwell in Sevenoaks, was the place where he drew inspiration, from when he and wife Clementine bought the property in the Twenties until his death in 1965.

Ever a formidable presence in the Kent commuter town, the former Tory PM was pictured peering out of the Sevenoaks Constitutional Club delivering an election speech to constituents in 1950. These days, the club houses five luxury apartments by Vine Projects.

A two-bedroom flat in the block, below, is for sale with Hamptons International at £499,950. It has a triple-aspect living room flooded with light, and the all-important gym.

See homesandproperty.co.uk/seven

Too small for all those shoes, SJP?

SARAH JESSICA PARKER, right, has put her Greenwich Village townhouse on the market. Could it be the wardrobe is no longer big enough?

The big, stylish, five-bedroom New York property, below, which she shares with actor husband Matthew Broderick and their three children, was first put up for sale by the couple in 2012, but they ended up taking it off the market. Now they have listed it again, but dropped the asking price to £13.6 million. They splashed out just under £11.7 million for the 6,800sq ft home three years ago, when the Sex and the City actress deemed the walk-in wardrobe roomy enough for her designer dresses and Manolo Blahniks. With the work of London-based Russian artist Nikolai Ishchuk currently adorning the walls, this is a chic space to suit budding Carrie Bradshaws.

Bond star’s £5m rumoured mill

By Amira Hashish

DANIEL CRAIG and wife Rachel Weisz, right, were thought to be keen to buy a former mill in Warwickshire. Word got out after the owner of Blackdown Mill allegedly said an A-lister’s agent had approached him. The 18th-century house was being rented out for more than £800 a week but the owner would reportedly sell for £5 million-plus. Craig’s agent denies the Bond actor will be buying the place but if the film star couple have set their hearts on a mill, Seaton Mill in Lincolnshire is a conversion to an immaculate family home, on for £1.95 million with Humberts.

homesandproperty.co.uk/Seaton

Make yourself at home in Mirren’s kitchen. Magnifique!

Homes & PropertyNews homesandproperty.co.uk with

HELEN MIRREN is on fine form in her latest film, The Hundred-Foot Journey, which is in cinemas across London.

The culinary drama showcases delicious properties, including a château in Tarn, south-west France, part of a development called La Durantie. On a 15-hectare estate, the belle époque-style house, right, was used as the set for the

Michelin-starred French restaurant run by Madame Mallory, played by Mirren, left. Now the film crew has gone, work is under way to turn it into a residential country club and spa, with free membership for all owners of the 57 homes.

The development overlook vineyards and miles of dense oak forest.Prices start at £268,300. For more information, visit durantie.com. G

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First-time buyers take heart — there are rewards beyond Zone 1Average house prices in London may have topped £500,000 but first-timers are seeking homes priced £250,000 to £400,000.David Spittles shows them where to look

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ALMOST 80 per cent of hous-ing demand in London is for homes below £500 per square foot. This roughly equates to a price ceiling

of £250,000 for a decent-size one-bed-room property and £400,00 for a two-bedroom home.

However, latest Land Registry data shows the average price of a home in the capital breaking through the £500,000 barrier. This is a sobering statistic for young Londoners trying to get on the property ladder.

Earnings are not keeping pace with recent rampant price rises, even for graduates with good career prospects. According to the Association of Gradu-ate Recruiters, the average graduate job in London pays £27,000 a year, or take-home pay of £19,750 a year after tax, student loan repayments and pen-sion contributions. Entry-level jobs for non-graduates pay considerably less.

These figures bring into sharp focus the so-called “affordability crisis” mak-ing life difficult or impossible for many would-be first-time buyers. Tougher

credit scoring is making it harder, while even those who have parental help to put down a 10 per cent deposit typi-cally have to spend more than 70 per cent of their net income on mortgage repayments.

This is why shared ownership and Help to Buy are so popular. Not enough new homes at the right price are being built to ease the burden, but more developers are pushing into the cheaper Travel Zones 3 to 6 and buying less expensive land for more affordable home building. These Zones will see the greatest demand over the coming years.

London’s high average property price is skewed by ultra-expensive homes in the centre. However, searching beyond Zone 1 and into outer boroughs can be more rewarding for first-time buyers. Walthamstow, Woolwich and Wembley are still within reach for many lower-budget buyers — as are Catford, Streatham, Tottenham, Harlesden, Hendon, Hil l ingdon, Edgware, Colindale, Croydon, Eltham and Sutton.

GET IN THE ZONEServed by four Tube lines, Wembley is one of the capital’s best-connected areas — less than 20 minutes from the West End— and also a fairly cheap location, a combination that is often overlooked.

Two-bedroom flats at Wembley Park, a new 5,000-home district ringing the famous stadium, cost from £420,000. This giant 85-acre development is the size of Leicester Square, Trafalgar Square and Covent Garden com-bined.

Brent council has moved its town hall to the site, making it a borough hub, while the developer, Quintain, talks of bringing West End-style glitz and glam-our to the area with fashion boutiques, bars, nightclubs and restaurants along-side the well-established concert and entertainment venues and the new fashion outlet.

North West Village, the latest phase, has apartment blocks grouped around a landscaped square. There is a gym, concierge service and residents’ club. Call 020 7409 8756. Nearby Park Royal,

DESPERATE FOR MY OWN PLACE, I FOLLOWED THE TUBE LINE WEST OUT OF TOWN

On the ladder: Amy Burton couldn’t afford Richmond, where she works, but she was able to buy a good-size flat in a low-rise development in Ruislip

From £305,000: affordable penthouses with generous-size roof terraces at The Ridge, St Mary Cray near Bromley

FOR five years, Amy Burton, 28, lived in shared accommodation in West Hampstead. “It got to the stage where I was desperate to have my own place,” she says. “I was fed up with paying rent into a black hole and seriously considered moving away from London.”

Richmond, where she works as a corporate affairs executive, was far too expensive, so she explored outer west London areas along the Tube lines and eventually bought a one-bedroom flat in Ruislip, putting down a 15 per cent deposit. Her total outgoings — mortgage and bills — are just under £1,200 a month.

The low-rise development has 60 apartments surrounding communal gardens and brings something fresh to an area characterised by interwar houses.

“It takes me an hour to get to work but the journey into central London is only 30 minutes. I bought a bigger flat in a smart development — and I am on the ladder.”

Expansion of the Metropolitan Railway a century ago put this area on the map, propelling it from a sleepy medieval

settlement to a commuter suburb. Now in Hillingdon borough, it forms part of an expanding commercial zone feeding off Heathrow airport.

Developer London Square favours this

side of the capital and has launched a site in nearby Eastcote, just 330 yards from the Tube station, which is served by both the Piccadilly and Metropolitan lines.Prices from £299,995. Call 0333 666 2535.


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for many decades an industrial zone used by distribution companies because of its quick links to central London, is transforming into a place to live and work. A branch of the Grand Union Canal passes through it, provid-ing an opportunity for waterside living. For many years, Guinness used the canal to transport barrels to Padding-ton for distribution to pubs.

First Central is an apartment scheme set in attractive landscaped grounds, with lakes, waterfalls, bridges and cycle paths, all part of a corporate campus owned by drinks company Diageo. In Zone 3, the location will get a boost with the arrival of Crossrail in 2018. Two-bedroom flats cost from £349,995. Call Bellway on 0845 018 0716.

Colindale, close to the M1, is where suburban Metro-Land begins, but it is on the Northern line in Zone 4, about 30 minutes from the West End and City, so it’s accessible for young profession-als priced out of inner London. Zenith House in Edgware Road brings urban glamour, with contemporary-design, energy-efficient flats in a development

with gym, underground parking, super-fast fibre-optic broadband and free car club membership. Prices from £265,000. Call Genesis housing asso-ciation on 0800 954 0196.

Set back from Edgware Road is Aura, 189 good-spec homes, including town-houses, in landscaped gardens. Prices from £277,500. Call Weston Homes on 01279 873 300.

Hendon Waterside is being built alongside 30-acre Welsh Harp Reser-voir, which has a boating club. Wem-bley and Sea Horse sailing clubs are nearby. Barratt has launched Lakeview apartments priced from £275,000. Call 0844 811 4334.

Lewisham has excellent rail links into central London, while the Docklands Light Railway provides a 15-minute hop to Canary Wharf. A council-led trans-formation of the town centre is under way, with hundreds of new flats, a new leisure centre, reconfigured road system, a new bus station and shopping mall. Riverdale House, an Eighties office building notable for its modern-ist architectural style, is being

converted into 137 flats and will have a hotel-style entrance foyer and rooftop communal terraces. Running alongside the Ravensbourne river, the site includes a Victorian mill with water wheel. Prices from £237,000. Call Galliard on 020 7620 1500.

GOING GREENEltham in Greenwich borough is Oyster card territory, only eight miles from Charing Cross. Greenwich is also one of the capital’s greenest boroughs. Grove Place in the town centre offers 144 good-quality flats in two stylish blocks overlooking a piazza and gar-dens, with hotel-style entrance foyers and secure parking. Prices from £295,000. Call 020 7620 1500.

At St Mary Cray, a Bromley satellite, housing association Affinity Sutton has launched a smart-looking gated scheme of flats and houses called The Ridge, set on a wooded hillside. Show homes are open. Affordable penthouses priced from £305,000 have generous-size roof terraces. One-bedroom flats from £205,000. Call 0845 6000 787.

From £237,000: flats at Riverdale House, above left, an Eighties office conversion beside the Ravensbourne river in rapidly improving Lewisham

From £349,995: two-bedroom flats at First Central, above, in grounds with lakes and waterfalls at Park Royal, NW10

From £275,000: Lakeview apartments, right, at Hendon Waterside


The Zone 2 guide to good-value homes close to central LondonEven in expensive areas there are city pockets worth researching, says Ruth Bloomfield

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WHERE do you find the best value for money if you work in central London and don’t want to commute too

far to get home? A new study of every council ward in Travel Zone 2 reveals pockets of value, even in the most expensive areas.

START YOUR SEARCH AT THE MARKET’S TOP ENDThe most expensive Zone 2 options are to be found in an elite cluster of urban villages, all of which would pass the coffee shop, independent deli and organic butcher tests, say researchers Savills.

Hampstead leads the field with an average house price of £1.65 million, up 32 per cent in the last five years. Frognal and Fitzjohns ward, south-west of Hampstead Village, commands an aver-age of £1.36 million, up 22 per cent.

However, Camden Town and Primrose Hill ward, on £1.15 million, has outper-formed, up 75 per cent in the same period. Simon Edwards, a director at Savills, says Hampstead is seen as settled in its ways, while Primrose Hill is newly fashionable, with a batch of great gastropubs, boutiques and celebrity residents. He fears the planned High Speed 2 rail linkcould blight some areas but for now, buyers are paying £800,000 to £900,000 for a two-bed-room flat or £3.5 million to £4 million for a four-bedroom terrace house.

The most economical part of the ward is the western, Camden Town side. “It hasn’t got the cachet of Primrose Hill,

£1.4 million: Brackenbury Village house (see homesandproperty.co.uk/brack)

bargain wards, with prices up 11 per cent to an average £217,499. Jason Davis, sales manager at Kinleigh Folkard & Hay-ward, says the reason is the arrival of the East London line and the overspill of buyers priced out of Greenwich and Blackheath.

Davis believes the best areas to look are in and off Lewisham Way, where two-bedroom flats in Victorian houses cost between £250,000 and £300,000, and three-bedroom houses are priced £500,000 to £600,000.

Buyers are starting to request New Cross, says Davis, who suspects they harbour hopes that it will “do a Peckham” and begin a rapid process of gentrification. On this basis, he antici-pates that price rises of 10 to 15 per cent in the next 18 months are not out of the question.

and it’s more congested and noisy,” says Edwards. Two-bedroom flats there cost about £650,000-£700,000. The Gov-ernment’s recent decision to drop plans for a rail link from King’s Cross to Euston, which would have caused years of disruption in Camden Town, may encourage buyers in and boost prices.

The Town ward in the west, covering parts of Parsons Green and Fulham, has an average £1.05 million price, up 83 per cent in five years largely thanks to buy-ers priced out of Chelsea and Knights-bridge and tempted by some attractive new build, especially by the river.

BARGAIN BASEMENT Homes in Lea Bridge in Waltham Forest, average price £229,978, up 10 per cent in five years, and Canning Town North — average £226,044, up 14 per cent — less than a quarter of the cost of those in Primrose Hill and Fulham, are just as well connected to central London.

Price growth in these lower-value areas is far weaker than in their more affluent counterparts. Indeed, prices in Plaistow South, and Green Street East and West, both in Newham, have fallen a percentage point or two in five years, still struggling out of reces-sion.

The least expensive areas are concen-trated in east London, and so far they have not been adopted by middle-class “pioneers” priced out of the more expensive villages. They lack the period housing, good schools and burgeoning café culture that tend to lead on to gentrification. A possible exception is New Cross, the best-performing of the

BEST OF BOTH WORLDSBuyers searching for affordability and evidence of a price recovery should head for Hammersmith Broadway ward, which includes highly desirable Brack-enbury Village and Brook Green. With an average price of £795,803 it does not make it into the most expensive prime peripheries, but it has enjoyed price growth of 64 per cent in five years.

Justin Holder, sales director at Marsh & Parsons, says growth is down to good transport links, great schools — parents fight for Brackenbury and John Betts primary schools in particular — quality period family homes in real neighbour-hoods, “and people being priced out of Kensington, Holland Park and Notting Hill.” Two-bedroom flats sell for £650,000-£850,000, while a five- or six-bedroom terrace house costs £2 mil-lion to £2.5 million. Shops in King Street and Shepherd’s Bush Road are improv-ing, restaurants are changing and West-field is nearby.

In north London, Cantelowes, which covers parts of Camden Town and Kent-ish Town, has an average £640,758 price, with growth of 61 per cent in five years. Savills’ Simon Edwards says edu-cation, notably Camden School for Girls, is a draw. “A lot of people move to this area because they want to get their girls in.” Cantelowes will benefit from the opening of Collège Français Bilingue de Londres, which teaches the French curriculum. “We have so many French buyers, They are coming over from Paris in their droves. They seem really disillusioned with President François Hollande and they love London.”

£550,000: Cambridge Grove flat, W6 (see homesandproperty.co.uk/cam)

Camden Lock: Camden Town & Primrose Hill ward house prices leapt in five years

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Homes & PropertyAffordable homes

Homes to keep your bank balance healthy Shared-ownership flats at a former children’s hospital are among a crop of east London schemes ideal for first-timers. By David Spittles

HISTORIC Queen Elizabeth Children’s Hospital in Bethnal Green starts a new life this week with the

unveiling of 186 flats behind the original listed Victorian façade.

The much-loved hospital closed in 1996, four years after the late music legend Michael Jackson arrived with Mickey and Minnie Mouse by helicopter to visit sick children. After closure the building was left to rot but has been rescued as part of Mayor Boris Johnson’s affordable homes initiative. Loft-style apartments with 14ft ceiling heights plus shared-ownership flats are part of the mix. Homes range from studios to penthouses. Prices start at £365,000. Call 020 3376 7775.

This being a trendy part of east London, between Columbia Road and Broadway Market, the marketeers have invented a new identity for the site. It is now called Mettle & Poise — more will be revealed at tomorrow’s launch at Bethnal Green’s Town Hall Hotel.

The project is a collaboration between Family Mosaic housing association and construction company Rydon. English Heritage laments demolition of most of the old buildings on site, which during the 20th century evolved from a small 26-bed hospital into a major NHS complex. Two new six-storey apartment blocks are being built behind the historic frontage and completion is due in 2016. Buyers pay a £2,000 reservation fee and put down a 20 per cent deposit, payable in two chunks during the construction period.

East London’s charitable housing roots run deep. St Clement’s, a listed Victorian workhouse in Mile End, is at the heart of a community trust housing project backed by the Mayor. Launching later this year, this project is bringing 252 homes in the affordable £550-£650 per square foot price bracket. To register, call DTZ on 020 3296 2222.

Barts’ five-acre Whitechapel Estate next to Royal London Hospital has also been snapped up for development — a mixed residential and retail scheme with up 550 homes, while Mondrian is a new development on the site of former

Mildmay Mission Hospital in Shoreditch. Prices start at £440,000 for one-bedroom flats. Call Genesis on 0800 542 7236.

Peabody housing trust has set up a private sales division and launched several schemes aimed at first-time buyers. Lock Keepers, with 46 apartments alongside Limehouse Cut, the capital’s oldest canal, brings the extra draw of waterside living.

Built on the site of the former Sunflower Mill, it comprises three new warehouse-style blocks overlooking a lock basin. Two-bedroom apartments start from under £400,000 and shared ownership is available. Another scheme is Merchants Walk, Bow, where prices start at £265,000. Call 020 7922 7211. Circle housing association, which also has a long

history in the area, has unveiled Tredegar Place, which takes its name from the Georgian conservation area in Bow. Studios and flats with up to three bedrooms are priced from £230,000, below the stamp duty threshold. Call 0845 223 0000.

New Festival Quarter in Poplar shares the same postcode as Canary Wharf, E14, and has one-bedroom flats priced from £364,995. Set across four buildings, the scheme has a private gym, 24-hour concierge and residents’ roof garden. Call Bellway on 0845 459 5020.

The same developer has launched Pembury Circus, 260 homes on the site of a once-notorious council estate in Hackney. Nearby Ridley Road street market is now a cool local hangout. Prices from £244,950. Call 0845 257 6064.

From £364,995: one-bedroom flats with a private gym and roof garden at New Festival Quarter in Poplar, E14

From £365,000: apartments at Mettle & Poise, the former Queen Elizabeth Children’s Hospital in Bethnal Green, where shared ownership is part of the mix


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Who would say no to a Scottish castle? If we all fall out, could it be goodbye from Londoners owning a historic Highland pile? By Cathy Hawker

AN ENGLISHMAN’S home is his castle, as the saying goes, but Scotland can lay claim to the highest con-centration of these historic

beauties — more than 2,000 of them — and if you want to buy one, you may have to act fast. With Scots voting on independence tomorrow, the proce-dure for an English, Welsh or Northern Irish buyer hoping to bag a property north of the border could be about to change forever.

SCOTTISH PROPERTY PRICESProperty prices in Scotland have grown 49 per cent in the last decade according to estate agents Strutt & Parker, yet the average house price remains one of the lowest in the UK at £141,872, against £533,489 in Greater London and £256,883 in England and Wales.

Even when you consider Edinburgh’s fine Georgian terraces, and rambling estates in rural areas, Scottish property represents striking value. “In total our London property is now worth £1.5 tril-lion,” says Andrew Bridges of London agents Stirling Ackroyd. “That is almost four times as much as all the residential property in Scotland combined.”

You could pick up a castle with a 50-acre estate and fishing rights from £500,000. English and foreign buyers usually spend between £1 million and £2.5 million says Robert McCulloch of Strutt & Parker. He sells up to six castles a year, with Scotland and southern Eng-land each accounting for 40 per cent of buyers and the rest from overseas.

“Buyers want peace and pretty rural locations with the hotspots nearby — the popular and attractive Highlands of Perthshire, Inverness-shire and Royal Deeside,” adds McCulloch. However, renovation of a castle comes on a grand scale, while repair and running costs

can be staggering. Biomass boilers and good insulation are just the start. And buyers should beware of taking on a lot of land with their castle. SNP leader Alex Salmond has pledged new land taxes, and to grant communities the

right to buy parts of large estates. “The dream can turn sour,” says McCulloch. However, the dream has not soured for London banker-turned-interior designer to the rich and famous, Katharine Pooley. Her home is Forter

Castle in Perthshire, 90 minutes’ drive north of Edinburgh. Built in 1560, it lay in ruins for 300 years until Pooley’s father, Robert, bought it in 1990. He restored the exterior, and in 2003 Pooley started on the interior décor. She

says: “It needed to be luxurious and ‘more Scottish’.” Forter has five double bedrooms and an awkward staircase. “One of many problems was getting four-poster beds upstairs,” adds Pooley. She called in Georgian Antiques in Leith who sent an expert to saw the beds in half, then reassemble them.

TOURIST FAVOURITEToday Forter has a vaulted kitchen, a wedding chapel and a Great Hall with a huge stone fireplace and a grand table seating 16. Pooley has used iron chan-deliers, her family tartan, French tap-estries, 18th-century mirrors and the occasional Ralph Lauren fabric. Forter is now blissfully warm and to pay the bills she rents it out for £4,250 for a long weekend. It is popular for Christmas and new year, and fishermen have been joined by golfers thanks to world-class courses including Gleneagles, hosting the Ryder Cup from September 26-28.

Will Pooley fall out of love with Scot-land if Scotland falls out of love with us? “Not a bit of it. I would never sell the castle in the event of a yes vote. The vote is a monumental political decision for Scots, but this country is a beautiful, unique gem with the most welcoming people. Visitors will always be drawn to Scotland and Forter Castle.”

Strutt & Parker: struttandparker.com Forter Castle: fortercastle.com

Offers over £2.9 million: Castle Gogar, left, Edinburgh (savills.com)

Weddings and sporting breaks: Forter Castle, right, Katharine Pooley’s home in Perthshire

Offers over £1.1 million: partly refurbished Castle Grant, near Grantown on Spey in the Highlands, through Strutt & Parker

DREAM OF LIVING NEXT TO ACRES OF PARKLAND IN ZONE 2?


For sale: an aristocratic Italian romance Treasures from a glamorous count and countess’s life are being sold, says Philippa Stockley

Homes & Property Auction homesandproperty.co.uk with

ROMANTIC may seem an odd word for an auction but the contents sale of the two Italian residences of Count and

Countess Martignone at Bonhams in New Bond Street is just that.

The Martignone family is ancient. Ennobled in the 13th century by Ottone Visconte, 13th archbishop of Milan, in the 14th century a Martignone ruled Alexandria. Fast-forward to the Second World War, and handsome young doctor Ettore Martignone served with the Red Cross, to be awarded the Maltese Cross in 1946. His wife Mariella, known as Maria, created the influential postwar company Vampa Chemicals, and was awarded many honours, too. The couple died childless. However, there is an unidentified beneficiary, hence the sale a week today.

Pictures of the glamorous, party-loving couple, whose guests included prime ministers, popes and even the last king of Italy, show them laughing together, apparently in love all their lives. Their passion was collecting Old Master paintings and decorative arts, with which their flat in Milan and their Genoese villa, perched above the dramatic Ligurian coast, were crammed. They often travelled to America, and stayed with the Kennedys.

SOUVENIRS OF GILDED LIVESThe grand and charming possessions in this sale speak volumes of the character of their owners. You know they loved to entertain from the contents of their homes, which are gilded and exuberant, but also surprisingly cosy. There are more than 500 lots, and given the definite quality of many pieces, prices are pitched to sell. Moreover, all lots

estimated above £3,000 are sold “without reserve”, which means that even if the final bid is £3,010, the hammer will come down. So some bargains may be had.

Guests of the count and countess could watch each other in big, carved, gilded mirrors — a fine Florentine one,

£10,000-£15,000: 17th-century portrait of a boy with a rose and an apple (lot 88)

almost seven feet high, is priced at £800-£1,200. Scattered around were tables, demilune tables, bureaux and commodes, some decorated with fine marquetry, others with Italian pietra dura or rustic carving. A nice marble-topped Belgian commode in three woods, lot 275, is on for £2,500-

£3,500, and there’s a gorgeous Venetian 18th-century arte povera gilded bureau cabinet for £4,000 to £6,000. More provincial, and kept at the villa, is a sweet writing table in walnut, lot 459, on curvaceous legs, for £500-£800.

The couple smothered all these

£2,000-£3,000: a pair of gilded 19th-century chairs (lot 355)

£1,000-£1,500: gilt cast-iron chimneypiece (lot 349)

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surfaces with decorative objects trawled worldwide, and even propped small, gilded paintings between their books. It looked fabulous, but must have been hell to dust. They had a particular love of quirky silver, such as a group of 21

articulated fishes, lot 30, for £2,000-£3,000. The lot includes four silver frogs. There are numerous groups of silver animals and birds, and a pair of German novelty drinking cups straight out of Alice in Wonderland, one with a chicken body and nodding

head, for £2,500-£3,500. There are piles of ordinary silver for the table. Just the tally of solid silver coffee pots — well over 20, many of them Georgian — indicates how many delicious breakfasts and dinners were served over the decades. Lot 168, a

George II coffee pot weighing 20oz, represents a good buy at £700-£1,000, as do seven coloured decanters, lot 61, for the same estimate. There’s silver gilt, too, including a pretty 1900 partial dessert service, lot 205, at £2,000-£3,000.

SILK SOFAS, STATUES AND A WALNUT FOUR-POSTERThere are comfortable sofas, one done in petit point, lot 94, for £2,000-£3,000, plus chairs in silk or velvet, such as a French walnut salon suite for £700-£1,000 or 10 black and gold chairs for £2,000-£3,000 (lot 355). Good pairs of chairs, for those intense conversations over Negronis, include a grand leathered pair, lot 93, in walnut, at £800-£1,000.

In Liguria, the more provincial décor included old cassone and substantial wooden furniture such as a great walnut four-poster bed at £600-£800 (lot 489). A magnificent marble garden fountain, with rearing horses snorting spray to compete with the boiling sea below, is lot 507, priced at £5,000-£8,000.

In both homes, paintings ranged from fine devotional works to portraits, all with distinctive personality. The couple evidently did not do bland. Among the portraits is lot 54, a 17th-century ruffed lady, oil on panel, for £1,200-£1,800. Impressively lovely is lot 88, a portrait of a 17th-century boy holding a rose, estimated at £10,000-£15,000, but it is lot 107, an adorable 18th-century terrier for just £300-£500, that steals the heart.

The auction of the contents of Count and Countess Martignone’s Milanese and Genoese properties is at Bonhams, 101 New Bond Street on September 24. Visit bonhams.com for full details.

Passion for art and life: Count and Countess Martignone were avid collectors and party-goers

£2,500-£4,000: painted panels, left, nine in total (lot 3)

£4,000-£6,000: an 18th-century Venetian arte povera cabinet, right, (lot 371)


Access all areas of 800 amazing London buildingsFrom the City’s tallest tower to the ultimate Hackney shed, it’s open house in the capital. By Philippa Stockley

FOR Open House London this weekend, we are all invited into 800 buildings that demonstrate the capital’s best architecture.

From dazzling towers by starchitects to inspiring, architect-designed homes, all manner of buildings are throwing wide their doors, and this year timber is really hot, alongside all the brick, steel and glass.

Now in its 23rd year, Open House, which started as a not-for-profit organisation at a kitchen table to involve Londoners in buildings and public spaces, runs in 20 cities, from Buenos Aires to Adelaide, with newcomers Vienna and San Diego.

There is often a chance to meet the architect, and a record 1,600

architect-led tours this time round. This year’s big show stopper is the Leadenhall Building, nicknamed Cheesegrater, designed by renowned architects Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners. The 52-storey, 735ft building with a distinctive, angled shape is the City of London’s tallest office tower, and has half an acre of public space — the largest new space in the City.

Homes on show include new builds, roof or garden extensions and retrofits, and it is in the homes category that timber really cuts a dash. The lovely, sustainable stuff has roared back to the design front line — often on a budget, too. Next year, look out for brick, which is also enjoying a renaissance, but this year, renewable timber is the star. Bateman Mews in

Clapham, by Anne Thorne Architects, shows hard-working, low-cost wood at its best. Five affordable homes were built for Metropolitan Housing Trust on a wooded backland site using prefabricated, durable red cedar panels, with old newspaper used in the walls as insulation. The houses have green roofs, a central garden and L-shape layouts, to cut overlooking. Light, ultra-sustainable yet modern, these homes in their leafy setting are a brilliant housing model.

New House in Highbury is a single-storey, two-room “urban cabin” by Studio 54 Architecture, built at the junction of two terraces on a small former car park. The house has a brick structure but with doors and windows crafted in cedar, with cedar

cladding inside and out. Imagine the warm smell on a winter’s evening. New House shows how effective bespoke joinery is in making the best use of space. With its green roof punctured by lights, this slightly Scandi eco-home also has excellent insulation and heating credentials.

Writer’s Shed in Hackney, by Weston Surman & Deane, at the bottom of a children’s author and illustrator’s garden, has the intended fairy tale quality and more. Lined inside and out with shingles, with a wood-burning stove surrounded by a substantial library, it has a veranda covered by a cedar screen of narrow slats with even gaps between, so that at night the whole shed glows, stripy and romantic, and the inside is visible.

Awe-inspiring: the Leadenhall Building, or “Cheesegrater”, is the City of London’s tallest office tower

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It’s gorgeous. The Tree House, by 6a architects, is a ramped extension on the back of an early 19th-century cottage in Mile End, made of reclaimed jarrah. Designed as living quarters for a mother in a wheelchair, the building, with its curvy lines, seems an organic part of the garden.

EXTRAORDINARY, sensuous and stylish is Room in a Room by Atmos, in Canary Wharf. Within a very large square room, a bedroom

and staircase have been inserted. The whole thing is computer-cut from plywood with oak detailing into swirling, curvy, structural ribs and stairs, to make a golden dream-room for the family, which includes two

little girls. No space is left unswirled. Computer-cut timber is used again in Kew House by Piercy & Co, which has a steel-and-glass shell but with timber interior walls, doors and floors that are left unpainted to let their beauty shine. The children get a laser-cut timber slide to the basement.

Finally, for a truly magnificent retrofitted room lined in glowing timber against old bricks, try the clock tower of the St Pancras Renaissance Hotel and Chambers next to King’s Cross station. This is a great chance to see how stunning wood can look on a lavish scale.

Open House runs this weekend. For full details of what’s on and how to book — if necessary — go to openhouselondon.org.uk

Ultimate den: Writer’s Shed in Hackney, left, at the bottom of a children’s author’s garden

It’s a swirly world: Room in a Room in Canary Wharf features a curvy computer-cut bedroom and staircase inside a large square room

Open air: Forest Mews in Forest Hill, SE23, right, features three new houses, each with a studio and courtyard, all set around a communal courtyard

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Catch the big London Design Festival shows

Six must-see interiors events are setting trends for autumn and beyond. By Barbara Chandler

DESIGN devotees are flying in from far and wide as London Design Festival reaches its climax this week with six trade shows, open-

ing today, tomorrow and Sunday, showcasing a plethora of product launches and looking at interiors trends for autumn and beyond.

THE LOWDOWN ON THE SHOWSCelebrating 20 years, 100% Design opens today at Earls Court exhibition halls, SW5, where show director William Knight has pulled out all the stops. A Daniel Libeskind giant chandelier hangs in the foyer, the multi-arched entrance tunnel sparkles with light and mirrors, and the auditorium and bar are just as exotic. Tickets on Saturday’s public day cost £15 but you can get yours half price by using our readers code ES100 at 100percentdesign.co.uk.

Best for food and shopping is design-junction, with four floors of new design at The Sorting Office in New Oxford Street, WC1. It’s very people-friendly, open to allcomers, with street food and pop-up shops and runs from tomorrow until Sunday. Tickets cost £10 on the door or £8 online. Use code ES241 to buy two for the price of one at thedesignjunction.co.uk.

Tent London, the edgiest show, is staged at the Old Truman Brewery, off Brick Lane, E1. Open to all from tomor-row until Sunday — tickets £10.

The 17th edition of Designersblock is a gathering of the avant-garde that’s free to enter and guaranteed to enter-tain, in its beautiful new listed venue — The Old Sessions House at Clerkenwell Green, EC1. It runs from tomorrow until Sunday. See verydesignersblock.com.

Focus fills up to 100 showrooms of Design Centre Chelsea Harbour with textiles, wallpapers, trimmings, light-ing, furniture, rugs and more, featuring 500 brands. Wednesday’s public day is free, with free transport from Sloane Square. Call 020 7225 9166 or visit dcch.co.uk. Decorex International,

the big daddy of the design shows, is in its 37th year and is being staged at Syon Park, Brentford, with free coach from Richmond Tube station. Cool new vibes, instilled by brand director Simone du Bois, include street food, and Hogarthian cameos by “alterna-tive” designers such as Nigel Coates. Public day is Tuesday next week, from 1pm-7pm, with tickets at £30. See decorex.com

LIGHTEN UPLighting is a star turn this year, with new designs that save energy and look sensational. There’s a whole new devoted show, called lightjunction, in the basement at designjunction, where you will find all the experts and the fittings.

Look for the Punk London stand from Innermost, who bill themselves as “the Vivienne Westwood for lighting”. A clever, adjustable spotlight hangs from the ceiling like a pendant. You can also

meet Jake Dyson — who is to lighting what his father is to vacuum cleaners — with Ariel, his super-slim LED strip that’s long and strong enough to light a kitchen island. Elsewhere, shades of the unexpected include wood and even marble. Prize for the most fun is the 6ft-tall HB Lamp by Michael & George (michaelandgeorge.com), shaped like a giant pencil with yards of self-adhesive cable spooling out from the tip which you can use to “draw” patterns on the wall. See it at Tent.

MATERIALS MASH-UPA “materials trail” at Tent leads to crushed glass bonded with bio-resin, plus 20 glorious British limestones and marbles (see materialscouncil.com). Yet more stunning stonework has its own tent at Decorex.

A “materials landscape” features at 100% Design. Curated by Old Street’s SCIN Gallery, it has the eco-aesthetic with reclaimed ply and glass. Michael Sodeau’s Halo Hypetex chair is made from the same carbon fibre as an F1 car, while a cute pair of owl-like speakers is modelled from resin composite.

Wood holds it own and is the preferred choice of many gifted designers. Most of those coveted furniture Design Guild Marks still go to wood designs. Samuel Chan heads the list, filling his Chelsea store with quiet, good-looking furniture — Chan is also showing at the design-junction event. At Tent, woodsman Sebastian Cox creates deliciously delicate design in coppiced hazel.

Meanwhile, skinny, eco-friendly fur-niture frames are big, with the mini-mum of tubular or squared-off metal supporting chairs and table tops.

IN IT TOGETHERFashion designers’ names pop up in unexpected places. Matthew William-son does a second collection for fabric and wallpaper experts Osborne & Little and print/fashion designer Jonathan Saunders brings his unmistakable style to The Rug Company. Paola Navone unveils new fabrics with Rubelli at Focus, where Tord Boontje has also conjured up shades and lamps for British furniture and lighting favourites Habitat and Porta Romana.

Designers rule — and London is the richer for it.

Left: Matthew Williamson with Osborne & Little designs — Jungle Beat (sofa), £55 a metre; Shimmer (cushion) £54 per metre

Below: Michael and Georgie Gettings of Michael & George with their HB Pencil Lamp, showing at Tent London

Above: designer David Lord of Junction Fifteen and the tubular steel Olly Stool, £245, available in a variety of colours and showing at Tent

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Once pushed aside by paint, wallpaper

Forget plain-painted minimalism. Pattern-mad London Design Festival is predicting a riot. . . on our walls, says Barbara Chandler

WALLPAPER is not just back on the agenda — it has top billing, and what a difference a decade makes.

Nurtured by Britain’s world-class art colleges and enabled by technology, wallpaper designers have techniques unheard of in the Nineties when minimalism edged wallpaper into the shadows. London today is pattern crazy, with a creative revolution under way on the catwalk and on the walls.

This is all good news for tired homes that need wallpaper’s instant fashion fix. You don’t need to paper every room — in contrast to the rest of your painted home, why not just

wallpaper your bedroom for a luxurious change of atmosphere? Or you might brighten your hallway with metallic surface-patterned paper to add light, or stripes for height. You could cover the dining room with a cosy, claret-coloured damask, or bathe with toile — so many people go for bathroom tiles but paper is cheaper and adds interest that does not have to be permanent. Finally, zap the home office with an on-trend geometric, or have fun with printed pictorial paper in the downstairs loo.

The wallpaper elite — 29 of them — are on a roll at a fabulous show open now at respected londonprintstudio

in Harrow Road, W10, which has been used for 40 years by many artists to print, show and promote their work. Called Wallpaper: Artists’ Interior Worlds, this is a free spectacle for the London Design Festival. Yes, even artists are doing wallpapers, including Jake and Dinos Chapman, who have been inspired by Goya.

Other artists have experimented with wood blocks, put portraits on to wallpaper, or made a political statement. “Digital techniques mean new designs, but the handmade is also valued,” says John Phillips, founder of the studio.

More to the domestic point is a fine

array by numerous sensational wallpaper girls, including Jocelyn Warner, Linda Florence, Tracy Kendall, Lizzie Allen, Claire Coles, Belinda Sharples and Deborah Bowness, while down from Scotland are the subversive Glasgow boys, Timorous Beasties. “Wallpaper now is truly art,” adds Phillips (londonprintstudio.org.uk).

London’s fashion duo Eley Kishimoto are showing at the Decorex trade show, which opens on Sunday at Syon Park, with public admittance on Tuesday afternoon, for £30. Their global brand of pattern panache is crashing into wallpaper with an eye-watering assembly of mad motifs.

Also showing in the Decorex tent of top décor is Maxine Hall, with her cool new Blackpop label, redolent of faded châteaux, with distressed damask and iridescent butterflies.

London Design Festival, in full swing, puts wallpaper in your face all over the capital. Some designers are a little unlikely, such as a trio of Swedish architects, Claesson Koivisto Rune, at designjunction, for Engblad & Co (engbladco.com). The designjunction show at The Sorting Office in New Oxford Street, WC1, is £10 on the door, or £8 online. Use code ES241 to get two tickets for the price of one at thedesignjunction.co.uk. Also off the pattern piste is a

Retro: Feathers Wallpaper, left, by Mini Moderns & Matt Sewell, £55 a roll (mini moderns.com)

Mesmerising: The Hypnotist, right, by Biba founder Barbara Hulanicki, is available in Mono, Noir and Lime & Ice, £60 per roll at Graham & Brown (grahambrown.com)

Urban skyline: Gasholder wallpaper, left, by Anthony Hughes at designjunction, £140 a roll (anthony -hughes.co.uk)

Tickled pink: Lady Bird wallpaper in Desert Rose colourway, right, by Binita Trivedi, £95 a roll, is at Tent London (mitasandco.com)

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is back starring on the interiors catwalk Into the blue: Chapelle Morpho, left, by Maxine Hall of Blackpop, a “distressed” design, £160 per 52cm X 10m roll (blackpop.co.uk)

Go wild in the forest: Amazonia Light, left, by Witch and Watchman, £250 per 52cm x 10m roll at Tent London (shoptent.co.uk)

Angle tangle: Momentum Sumi wallcovering, right, is £59 per roll (harlequin.uk.com)

Right: Prism wallpaper, £95 a roll, from Zoffany, illustrates the trend for fragmented pattern

Far right: Indie Wood wallpaper by Glaswegian Timorous Beasties, £340 a roll, is being launched at Decorex

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frenzied mash-up of indie motifs by Dutch wild card Studio Job, showing with Pad Home at Earls Court, SW5, during the 100% Design trade show opening today.

At Tent, the big show in east London opening tomorrow — £10 on the door — a dozen young designers are pushing pattern for walls, including the New Wave co-operative. In the adjacent Super Brands show, Graham & Brown has chosen flashy Northern Rose as its signature for next year. Barbara Hulanicki, founder of the iconic Biba Sixties fashion brand, is the star of a new V&A book, The Biba Years. At 78, she’s putting on to paper her Op Art

from a 1965 jumpsuit. Biba wallpaper costs £60 a roll, exclusively from grahamandbrown.com.

The Design Centre Chelsea Harbour, SW10, wallpaper heartland, is putting on its Focus mega show during the design festival. This explosion of chic décor opens to the trade on Sunday, with a full-on free-to-enter public day next Wednesday, including launches, talks, teas, and free transport from Sloane Square Hotel. Stop off en route at Osborne & Little and its opposite number in King’s Road, Designers Guild, famous worldwide for glamorous wallpaper.

MAJOR TRENDS Blue runs strongly as a relaxing colour theme, from moody indigo to the turquoise of a Southern sea, while you can detect an artist’s hand in carefully painted flowers and floral scenes, and in some showrooms lush tropical foliage evokes the rainforest.

Archives have been cleverly re-worked into scenes for modern life, or — only for the pattern pioneer — get visual shocks from new fragmented patterns with their jagged lines and triangles. Mid-century modern fans should go to see the Mini Moderns installation at the Festival Hall shop on the South Bank, with a retro portfolio themed around Festival Hall Fifties designs (southbankcentre.co.uk; minimoderns.com).

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Gardening problems? Email our RHS expert at: gardenproblems @standard.co.uk

buy itSee it: Chelsea Physic Garden lit up for charity walk Buy it: Sarah Raven’s Cutting

Garden Journal

Pattie Barron

Stop the show with big stars in small bordersPlant major-player bulbs with huge, stunning blooms for maximum impact in a mini space

DRIFTS of daffodils and tulips look glorious in the large garden, but for small borders, nothing beats going big. Bypass

the bulbs that only look good in a crowd and instead go for major players, the show stoppers that only need be planted in twos or threes to make a huge impact. These are the bulbs to plant over the coming weeks that will give your garden petal power next spring and summer.

Fritillaria meleagris, the dainty checkerboard fritillary, is beautiful in close-up, but Fritillaria imperialis, the spring-flowering crown imperial in sulphur yellow, scarlet and traffic-light orange, probably could stop traffic. On a straight, sturdy stem of at least three feet, the big, bunched hanging flowers beneath a tuft of spiky green leaves resemble a colourful cockatoo. Plant the bulb at least six inches deep, on its side to help prevent rotting, and if your soil is heavy, give it a base of grit. Crown imperials will even grow in the shade and if happy, will settle and spread.

Fritillaria persica Adiyaman is stunning in a different way. Masses of bellflowers in a dusky chocolate appear along the three-foot green stems in April. Plant this dark beauty in a sunny spot, perhaps between euphorbias, for a luscious contrast with the latter’s chartreuse cupped flowers. Ivory Bells, a luxurious creamy-white version, will stand out in a crowd as well as on a grey day.

Alliums fill the late spring to early summer gap, but if you plant just three bulbs of Allium giganteum, you can fill a broad border gap, too, with

CHELSEA PHYSIC GARDEN is one of seven cultural stop-offs on Maggie’s Culture Crawl, a 15-mile night-time walking tour of London being held this Friday to raise money for people living with cancer. The garden, which includes medicinal plants used to treat the disease, will be illuminated with light installations, and Rococo Chocolates will be serving hot chocolate to keep weary walkers on track and their spirits bright. Starting at Victoria Embankment Gardens, taking in the Serpentine Sackler Gallery, the Foreign Office and Maggie’s West London centre en route, the walk ends at the Royal Festival Hall. Registration is £40 — visit maggiescentres.org/culturecrawl.

IMAGINE growing your own supply of cut flowers, all year. In her month-by-month journal, Sarah Raven tells how to sow, grow, harvest and display her favourite garden blooms, and gives planting plans for a large cutting garden, a smaller cutting patch and within a mixed border.

Each month there are what-to-do lists, a cut flower project, and useful advice such as choosing the right vase, creating balanced arrangements and conditioning cut plants so they last as long as possible.

Sarah Raven’s Cutting Garden Journal costs £14.99, but Homes & Property readers can buy it for £12 including p&p by calling 01903 828503 and quoting code APG 220. Offer ends October 31.

Walk the talk: take Maggie’s Culture Crawl through the city Branching out: learn how to display flowers with flair

a trio of knockout, sheeny purple flower heads, up to six inches across, on strong, 42in-high stems. The spectacular pinky-lilac flower of Allium schubertii can only be described as a visual explosion — its only drawback is the short, 15in stem, so plant several at the front of the border where they will look like a series of fireworks in freeze-frame. The third heart stopper of the allium family is cristophii, which has huge, perfect round, silvery-lilac heads tightly packed with fine, star-shaped flowers that are a favourite subject of metalwork sculptors. As a bonus, all three varieties form seedheads that are almost as fabulous as the flowers.

The sheltered town garden is ideal for eremurus, the magnificent foxtail lilies that produce huge, fuzzy spikes, some five feet tall, each containing several hundred flowers. You can find varieties in luscious sorbet shades of lemon, ice pink, peach and orange as well as pure white. Plant the tuberous roots, crown upwards, on a raised bed of gravel to provide the drainage they need to stop them rotting in winter.

Give summer lilies a head start by planting them this autumn in deep black plastic pots, so you can drop them into the border next summer. They are so easy to grow but watch out for the lacquer-red lily beetle early in the year, which can demolish the flowers. It is easy enough to pick

off, but check the underside of leaves, too. My three head turners, renowned as much for their intoxicating fragrance as their fabulous blooms, are rich apricot, trumpet-flowered African Queen, which holds the RHS Award of Garden Merit; the divine Muscadet, with plum speckles on huge, white, wavy-edged open flowers, and Pink Perfection, which can produce up to 30 deep rose trumpet flowers on just one five-foot stem, each one pumping out opulent perfume. Now that’s what I call drama.

SUPPLIERSSarah Raven: 0845 092 0283

(sarahraven.com)Peter Nyssen: 0161 747 4000

(peternyssen.com)Jacques Amand: 01962 840 038

(livingcolourbulbs.com)

The pow factor:Crown imperial fritillaries make a stunning spring statement in pots or in the border

Heavy metal: star-shaped flowers with a silvery sheen pack the huge heads of Allium cristophii

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£2,499,950A VERY smart seven-bedroom house in Callcott Road, Kilburn, with a self-contained annexe (Foxtons).

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£1,295,000THIS house in Greencroft Gardens, NW6, has four bedrooms, a large terrace and garden (Sandfords).

homesandproperty.co.uk/green

£500,000A TWO double-bedroom flat, close to all the shops and cafés of West End Lane, West Hampstead (KFH).

homesandproperty.co.uk/west

£375,000A SMART two-bedroom flat in Grange Place, Kilburn, with a south-facing balcony (Ludlow Thompson).

homesandproperty.co.uk/grange

SpotlightKilburn

To find a home in Kilburn, visit homesandproperty.co.uk/kilburnFor more about Kilburn, visit homesandproperty.co.uk/spotlightkilburn

WATLING STREET was used by the Romans to connect their strong-holds in the north with Dover in the south,

passing through London. Today, the section of the ancient route at the heart of the north-west inner London suburb of Kilburn is called the A5 Kilburn High Road, a busy thoroughfare at the bound-ary of Brent and Camden boroughs.

The ancient street is central to the his-tory of Kilburn. The Red Lion pub, later known as The Westbury, was reputed to have stood on the same site since 1444, now occupied by Love & Liquor bar, while the discovery in the 18th cen-tury of health-giving springs brought tourists to the source close to where The

Great transport links — and more house for your moneyRegeneration is bringing new homes and a new school to join handsome period houses in this well-connected district, says Anthea Masey

Old Bell gastropub now stands. Unlike nearby Hampstead, where the discov-ery of spa waters sparked a building boom, Kilburn had to wait until the arrival of the railway in 1851 for develop-ment on any significant scale.

Two major buildings have left an indel-ible mark on Kilburn’s townscape. Grade I-listed St Augustine’s in Kilburn Park Road, known as the “cathedral of north London” is among the capital’s finest Victorian gothic revival churches. Designed by architect John Loughbor-ough Pearson, it is home to a high church congregation that has its roots in the Anglo-Catholic Oxford move-ment. The other local building of note is the Art Deco former Gaumont State Cinema in Kilburn High Road — said to

have got its name after the resemblance was spotted between its 120ft tower and the Empire State Building in New York. Designed by leading cinema architect George Cole, it is now owned by a church which is restoring the interior.

Four miles north-west of central Lon-don with Maida Vale to the south, Queen’s Park to the west, West Hamp-stead and Swiss Cottage to the east and Cricklewood and Hampstead to the north, Kilburn has long-standing Irish and Jewish communities and is also

home to large numbers of families of Afro-Caribbean and South Asian origin. South Kilburn is the focus of a 10 to 15-year regeneration programme that will bring 2,400 new mixed-tenure homes, shops, health facilities and a school.

WHAT THERE IS TO BUYKilburn has mainly late Victorian, Edwardian and detached Twenties houses. The earliest were built on the Kilburn Priory estate, from the 1840s. There are pretty white stucco semi-

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The best schoolsThe best shops and restaurants The latest housing developmentsHow Kilburn compares with the

rest of the UK on house pricesSmart maps to plot your

property search

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For all this and more, visit homesand property.co.uk/ spotlightkilburn

TEST YOUR KNOWLEDGEWho gave Dudley Moore a sofa to sleep on in Kilburn? Find the answer at homesandproperty.

co.uk/spotlightkilburn

■WHAT HOMES COSTBUYING IN KILBURN (Average prices)One-bedroom flat £427,000Two-bedroom flat £618,000Two-bedroom house £806,000Three-bedroom house £1.45 millionFour-bedroom house £1.71 million

Source: Zoopla

RENTING IN KILBURN (Average rates)One-bedroom flat £1,478 monthTwo-bedroom flat £1,890 a monthTwo-bedroom house £2,104 a monthThree-bedroom house £3,082 a monthFour-bedroom house £4,762 a month

Source: Zoopla

NEXT WEEK: CANARY WHARF Do you live there? Tell us what you think @HomesProperty

HAVE YOUR SAY KILBURN@barrymcgee North London Tavern for beer (being refurbed), Istanbul for great shish kebab, Black Lion for tapas, Colin Campbell 4 ceilidh!

@stefanlevy Belvedere café does the best BLT I’ve ever tasted and Barraco is a Brazilian feast.

@unkleden superb @TricycleTheatre, Afghan cuisine @Ariana2kilburn, Monday night comedy @thegood shipNW6 and ALL the transport.

detached villas in Priory Road. Willes-den Lane divides the Mapesbury Estate — with its popular large, double-fronted Edwardian houses — from Brondesbury Park and its big semis and detached Twenties houses. In the square formed by Brondesbury Villas, Salusbury Road Willesden Lane and Kilburn High Road are pleasant roads of two- to four-sto-rey Victorian terrace houses.

The most expensive house currently on the market is a newly refurbished, 4,000sq ft, five-bedroom corner house in Brondesbury Road, at £3.9 million (homesandproperty.co.uk/brond). The most expensive house in the Brondesbury Park area, in Milverton Road, is detached with seven bed-rooms, for £3.3 million (homesand-

property.co.uk/milver). The most expensive house on the Mapesbury Estate, an Arts & Crafts-influenced property with seven bedrooms in Teignmouth Road, is on at £2.75 million (homesandproperty.co.uk/mape). More typical of this estate, a four-bed-room detached red-brick Edwardian house in St Gabriel’s Road is for sale at £2 million (homesandproperty.co.uk/gabriel). Kilburn is also a good place for flats converted from large houses. A two-bedroom garden flat in Walm Lane is for sale for £549,995 (homesandproperty.co.uk/walm).The area attracts: people move to Kilburn to get more for their money than in neighbouring Maida Vale, West Hampstead and Queen’s Park.

Staying power: the population can be transient, but families who bag a Mapesbury Estate house tend to stay.Open space: Kilburn Grange Park is a small local park off Kilburn High Road with tennis courts, a multi-use court for baseball and football and a chil-dren’s play area. The Mapesbury Dell is a community-owned and maintained oasis in Hoveden Road.

Queen’s Park, owned and run by the City of London Corporation, is nearby and hosts the annual Queen’s Park Day, much like a fête. The park has tennis courts, a pitch and putt course, petanque, children’s playground with paddling pool, a small zoo, a café and a Victorian bandstand. The open space of Hampstead Heath isn’t far away.

LEISURE AND THE ARTSThe Tricycle in Kilburn High Road, a leading fringe theatre, commissions its own plays which often transfer, some to the West End. There is also a cinema for new-release and art house films.

Kilburn and the High Roads was the late singer-songwriter Ian Dury’s first band in the early Seventies, and Kil-burn High Road still has an active music scene. There are several pubs special-ising in Irish music as well as others showcasing local indie bands. The Good Ship in particular is a popular music venue and comedy club. The nearest council-owned swimming pool is at Swiss Cottage Leisure Centre.Travel: Kilburn is well-off for Zone 2 train and Tube stations. Queen’s Park and Kilburn Park are on the Bakerloo line, with Willesden Green and Kilburn on the Jubilee line. Brondesbury Park and Brondesbury are on the Over-ground, the old North London line, and Kilburn High Road, also on the Over-ground, has trains to Euston. An annual travelcard to Zone 1 costs £1,256.Councils: most of Kilburn is in Brent, with Band D council tax of £1,357.94. East of Kilburn High Road it comes under Camden, with tax of £1,320.48. Both councils are Labour controlled.

Established favourite: customers peruse the menu at Jack’s café in Salusbury Road

Yummy mummy territory: pretty, semi-pedestrianised Lonsdale Road, off Salusbury Road, has eateries with outside tables including Nineteen, left, a popular café, gift shop, bakery and supper club co-founded by Carol Charlton, below left

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Photographs:: Graham Hussey


Homes & Property Ask the expert homesandproperty.co.uk with

WHAT’S YOUR PROBLEM?IF YOU have a question for Fiona McNulty, please email [email protected] or write to Legal Solutions, Homes & Property, London Evening Standard, 2 Derry Street, W8 5EE.We regret that questions cannot be answered individually but we will try to feature them here. Fiona McNulty is a partner in the residential property, farms and estates team at Withy King LLP (withyking.co.uk).

These answers can only be a very brief commentary on the issues raised and should not be relied on as legal advice. No liability is accepted for such reliance. If you have similar issues, you should obtain advice from a solicitor.

More legal Q&As Visit: homesand property.co.uk

We’ve agreed our house sale — is it okay if we change our minds now?

QWE HAVE accepted an offer on our property, but can we change our minds? No contracts have been

signed. We do not want to get into difficulties and have to pay compensation to the person who wanted our house but we do not want to sell to her now.

AAN OFFER to buy or sell a property is not legally binding in England and Wales until contracts are

exchanged.I am not sure how much work has

been done in your case, or what progress has been made to date but if you had an estate agent acting for you, the buyer would have made the offer through that agent. Explain to your agent about your change of heart and then the agent can inform the buyer of your decision.

If you have no agent because it was a private sale and the buyer made the offer directly to you, then you will have to inform the buyer that you no

Q I INTEND to downsize and have seen two properties I like — a garden flat and a small terrace house. I have a dog but my girlfriend says I will definitely not be allowed to keep it

in the flat, so I must go for the house. I prefer the flat but cannot bear the thought of being parted from my dog. Is my girlfriend correct?

A IT DEPENDS on the terms of the flat’s lease. Ask the selling agent or the seller whether dogs are allowed and ask to see a copy of the lease, which will contain covenants, some of which will apply

to the landlord and some to the lessee. These covenants are likely to be included in the main part of the lease but there is also likely to be a schedule of restrictive covenants. Look for those which bind the lessee.

Most leases contain covenants relating to keeping pets. They may say dogs are not allowed in the flat at all, or that one would be allowed with prior written consent of the landlord. In the latter case, contact the landlord or the managing agent for the building to see if you could keep your dog at the flat. If your pet causes a nuisance, by barking or fouling common areas for example, the landlord’s consent could be withdrawn or you could be in breach of other covenants relating to noise or nuisance.

If you have friends or family with dogs who may visit, establish at the outset if their pets can be allowed in on a temporary basis. If you own a share of the freehold you will have a say, but you may be outvoted by the other shareholders. A freehold house is unlikely to have any covenants regarding dogs, so may be a better bet.

Fiona McNultyOUR LAWYER ANSWERSYOUR QUESTIONS

longer wish to proceed with the sale.Generally there are two identical parts to a contract for the sale and purchase of a property, with one part signed by the seller and the other by the buyer.

However, signing a contract does not make it binding until there is an exchange of contracts — which means that the two parts of the contract are physically exchanged, or the parties’ solicitors agree with each other by telephone that the contracts are deemed to be exchanged. At this point the contract becomes legally binding on both parties.

A solicitor must always obtain the client’s authority before exchanging contracts and it is on exchange of contracts that the deposit is paid.

If contracts had been exchanged and you pulled out of the sale, you would be in breach of contract.

Even though contracts were not exchanged your buyer may ask you to meet or contribute to her out-of-pocket expenses, such as any survey or mortgage valuation fees or solicitors’ costs which will now be wasted.

There is no legal obligation on you at all to get involved in this but very occasionally some sellers feel morally obliged to make some sort of contribution, depending on their reason for not proceeding.

PUTNEYSW15

www.londonsquare.co.uk

CALL 0333 666 2838 FOR YOURINVITATION TO THE LAUNCH


MONDAY The lettings market has taken a massive turn for the better since early last month, after a subdued 18 months. Prospective tenants have gone from viewing 15 or 20 properties to walking into one and making an offer on the spot. It is partly a reaction to the sales market slowing down.

A prospective tenant calls me this morning to say he knows things are moving quickly locally so he wants to tie up something immediately. He is typical of the client we are seeing — in his late twenties, works in Canary Wharf and was looking to buy. But he is tired of watching prices rise and knows mort-gages are taking longer to get, so he wants to rent again. Most of our clients are based in the City, Canary Wharf or work for big accountants in More Lon-don, and they don’t mess about.

TUESDAY Our clients aged 40-plus are often look-ing for Monday-to-Friday pads, as at

weekends they return to their families in the countryside, or in many cases Paris. A chap phones this morning to tell me he is looking for a two-bedroom flat for about £550 a week where he will spend weekdays. He is currently spend-ing £1,000 a week on a hotel room.

I head to a viewing with a prospective tenant. The current tenant is expecting me, but after several heavy knocks on the door, there is no answer so I let us in with a few loud: “Hellos.” I assume no one is there so I carry on showing the apartment.

Out of nowhere, a woman flies into the corridor. I am shocked and so is she, as she clearly had no idea we were there. The viewing continues with

everyone suffering a slight sense of bewilderment, but the flat is suffi-ciently impressive that the viewer makes an offer, which is accepted.

WEDNESDAYA Russian client gets in touch. He is a young, self-made billionaire who is renting one of the two huge, impressive penthouses in a newly converted land-mark riverside warehouse building in Wapping for £3,500 a week.

He calls me today to tell me he wants the next-door penthouse, too, which

is on for the same price. He is trying to encourage some of his friends to come to London, so it seems he wants to rent an extra penthouse in case they decide to drop by.

THURSDAY Pets are a hazard of the job — particu-larly cats in my case. I have been mauled by several lately. At a valuation this morning, the owner — who isn’t there — hasn’t told me whether I can let her cat out, so I do my best to keep the creature indoors. As a result, it

scratches me to pieces. I am more of a dog lover...

At another valuation this afternoon, I have fun entertaining a lively bulldog while discussing the property market with the owner. I can only imagine that it is due to all the excitement, but the dog suddenly vomits right in front of me. While the owner cleans it up, the dog wants to go on playing but my enthusiasm has waned.

FRIDAY We secure a great new instruction at Three Quays, overlooking the river next to the Tower of London. The views from the massive terraces of the three penthouses are amazing and these properties are likely to rent out for £3,000-£4,000 a week. These prices are as high as it gets in this area. We currently have one English banker who is renting a flat for £3,000 a week while his family home in Wimbledon is being completely refurbished.

Clients at this level can be demanding and certainly expect a high level of personal service. I arrange to meet with the Russian to go through the paper-work for the second penthouse but the last time I did that, he just walked off while I was in mid-sentence and went into a nearby restaurant. I wasn’t sure whether to follow him or not, so I just left it. When someone is paying over £300,000 a year for two flats, you just have to run with it.

Diary of an estate agent

I prefer dogs to cats — but this one’s throwing up problems

Simon Deller is a senior negotiator in residential lettings at Cluttons Tower Bridge.

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Smart mooBy David Spittles

SEE YOU IN COURTKew! What a view from

Thames-side penthouses

THE BUTTS conservation area, sitting back from the river, is the jewel in Brentford’s crown. It forms a large, L-shaped enclave, with a wide avenue and a market square dominated by the old town’s listed former

magistrates’ court. Built in 1850, the court has now been refurbished into

Magistrates House — nine apartments with double-height spaces, large terraces and original features including pitch pine trusses.

The Victorian entrance foyer with its magnificent staircase has been restored, too, while the former cells have been turned into basement storage rooms with bicycle racks. Prices start from £495,000. Call Hamptons International on 020 8840 4545.

Fresh development projects in Brentford are bringing scores of new homes and a revived sense of neighbourhood. The district lies on the more affluent west side of London and has both Thames and canal

frontage plus fast road links to Heathrow airport. Up the road is Brentford Lock West, with 530 flats and townhouses, part of an 11-acre scheme alongside Grand Union Canal. As well as commercial and leisure space, new moorings, pontoons and a footbridge are being

From £495,000: apartments at Magistrates House in Brentford

FLY into Heathrow and you see why people like to live in the leafy outer reaches of south-west London — the Thames, the commons and the great green tract of Richmond Park. Despite traffic jams and aircraft noise, many find it ideal.

Two riverfront penthouses that capture this panorama have been unveiled at Hyperion Tower, Kew Bridge West. Both duplexes have 1,500sq ft of inside space and full-height glass walls. One has a wraparound

terrace on all four sides and the other has a spectacular glazed atrium with a 775sq ft roof terrace. From £2.15 million.

The wider scheme has 249 flats in seven riverside buildings, landscaped courtyards and lawns, with the Royal Botanic Gardens on the opposite bank of the Thames. St James, the developer, has included an orangery, sculptural planting and water jets. Apartments cost from £595,000. Call 020 8662 6000.

From £2.15 million: The Suites at Hyperion Tower, Kew Bridge West, include two stunning riverfront penthouses

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STRONG CASE FOR LIVING IN HOLBORN

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JUST along from the handsome old red-brick mansion blocks facing Battersea Park, new Victorian-style townhouses at Warriner Place, left, have an airy lower-ground level set around an inner courtyard, plus underground parking. From £1,995,000. Call Barnard Marcus on 020 7768 6607.

created, while the towpath is being widened and Art Deco warehouses are undergoing refurbishment. Homes have “green” credentials, with high energy-efficiency ratings, rooftop allotments and solar panels. From £335,000 to £579,000. Call 020 8569 7449 for further information.

INNER and Middle Temple, near the Royal Courts of Justice, form London’s oldest live-work estate. For centuries, barristers and lawyers have lived over the shop in chambers. Now, with the arrival of global law and accountancy firms, the wider Holborn legal district is changing and modern apartments are being built for the area’s high-earning career professionals.

Chancery Quarter, left, is the latest boutique development, with nine open-plan flats that have full-height windows and contemporary interiors. From £685,000 to £1.45 million. Call Hurford Salvi Carr on 020 7250 4950.

The Lincolns in Gray’s Inn Road is a scheme of 16 new flats above traditional shop fronts that slots seamlessly into the Georgian streetscape. It is a “green” building with solar panels and a biodiversity roof and backs on to the gardens of one of the four Inns of Court. Prices from £855,000. Call estate agent Robert Irving Burns on 020 7637 0821.

Victorian styling brought right up to date

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wallpaper is back property · west end— and also a fairly cheap location, a combination that is...

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