Where was it?

In the Dorset village of Iwerne Minster.

A quick description

It was a three-bedroom terrace house, but one that didn’t have the terrace house feel of being hemmed in, because at the back, beyond the cobbled courtyard, there was half an acre of garden. The countryside was also only a 150-yard walk away.

How did you find it?

I was in the military and travelled a lot, but I wanted to put down roots. These were the days before the internet when you relied on estate agents’ offices and ‘for sale’ boards, plus patience. My first wife, Brigit, and I knew the area well and Iwerne Minster is an idyllic village that a lot of people pass by. We found the house within a few months and it became our family home for a while.

What sold it to you?

Location, location, location! The setting opposite the village church was typically British and simply perfect. Through the sound of those bells, you could also tell what day it was.

Was it a smooth purchase?

I don’t remember much pain. This was also back in the day when not much gazumping went on.

Best memory of living there?

Walking to the village shop most days when my children, James and Charlotte, were young to buy them an ice cream. It was wonderfully quiet even though we were only a few hundred yards from the A350.

Biggest indulgence?

This may sound ridiculous, but it was the first time I ever bought myself a set of drainage rods, and that Victorian plumbing definitely needed such a set to make everything flow freely. I haven’t been without them since. Such things come into their own when you have property.

What happened to the house?

I moved on with my job and ended up in the Herefordshire/Worcestershire area and purchased a property in Malvern, again on the edge of a village. I moved on again eventually, to a farm in Cornwall, and, in 2014, found myself at Chateau de la Motte Husson in France. This is really my first true country home — we have neighbours that we can’t even hear or see.

Dick Strawbridge will be appearing at the Game Fair (July 24–26), hosting Q&A sessions and taking part in a cookery demonstration with his wife, Angel, and children Arthur and Dorothy.

This feature originally appeared in the July 22, 2026, print edition of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.

You wait all year for a billionaire's palatial £25 million home in a leafy enclave of London to come up for sale, and then two come along at once.

Last week we looked at the Goldsmith family's magical home in Richmond Park, Ormeley Lodge, which was home to the late Lady Annabel Goldsmith for many decades — and the place where she and her husband, Sir James Goldsmith, hosted everyone from pop stars to royalty.

Today, we look at a different house cut from the same cloth, and located just three miles away: Stud House, the Lebedev family home in the grounds of Hampton Court, for sale with Knight Frank and Savills.

It has a huge amount in common with Ormeley Lodge: both are located in the grounds of a Royal Park (in this case, Hampton Court Park); both are Georgian buildings full of character, flair and beauty; both are on the market for £25 million; and both have been in the family of high-profile billionaires for many decades, with a guest list that reads like Who's Who. Stud Park was bought by Alexander Lebedev in 2007, and it has long been the home of his son Lord Lebedev — best known as Evgeny Lebedev, owner of The Independent and The Evening Standard newspapers — who is now selling the place.

The timing of the sale seems to be good for the vendor. Research from Knight Frank suggests that there are around 3,000-4,000 billionaires in the world at the moment (neither the Lebedevs nor the Goldsmiths are among them these days, according to reports), and many of them are flocking back to buy property in London.

New research by Beauchamp Estates suggests that the market for homes in the £15-million-plus bracket has been soaring in the first half of 2026, with £1.24 billion of ultra-prime property sold — that's up 79% on the same period last year.

The reason for all this? A combination of soaring stocks in tech companies, and the political instability in the Middle East making London once again an enormously popular spot for the well-heeled to buy a home. 'London has bounced back,' says Rosy Khalastchy of Beauchamp Estates, 'the luxury homes market spluttering back to life with American and Middle Eastern buyers currently dominating ultra-prime sales in the capital’s best addresses.'

We'd say that 'Stud House, Hampton Court' definitely counts as one of those 'best addresses', and whoever ends up taking on this 18th century home will have a place that really is quite something, inside and out. It's hard to know where to look in a home full of fascinating art and glorious furnishings, which Lord Lebedev brought together with the artist and designer Patrick Kinmonth and the antique dealer and interiors consultant Edward Hurst.

Stud House is a fascinating home, arranged on an unusual inverted-L floorpan: entering the house via an enormous grand reception hall, there is a reading room and conservatory immediately ahead of you, and to access the rest of the rooms you move around to the right through a second hallway, past the morning room and drawing room with its semi-circular bay window, and then on to the larger part of the house.

There's a library, study, dining room, TV room, kitchen, pantry and laundry arranged around the stairs in the centre of the house.

Head down and you'll find a huge wine cellar, but head up and you'll get to the first floor, where you'll find six of the eight bedrooms — including a magnificent master suite with dressing room and a huge bathroom attached.

Two of the bedrooms have access to a balcony looking over the grounds, and Hampton Court beyond, while there are also a couple of treatment rooms and a security room on the floorpan.

The second floor has the remaining two bedrooms, plus a sitting room and storage — it's a space that is seemingly ideal for staff accommodation.

It's a lot to get your head around, but thankfully the agents have kindly shared a video walkthrough which will let you see the house, the art, the grand pianos, the four-poster beds, the exotic wallpapers, the spectacular gardens (laid out by Mollie Sainsbury) and more.

Lord Lebedev — or Baron Lebedev, of Hampton in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames and of Siberia in the Russian Federation, to give him his full title — has spoken with great warmth of this beautiful home, though it wasn't necessarily the sort of home he'd have chosen himself. He explained to the FT a few years ago that it was really his father who fell for Stud House first: 'I think he was probably more in love with it than I was but I can see now, having grown older, that it’s a special house.'

There is one more curiosity of Stud House that's worth mentioning: it's a leasehold property, with the freehold part of Hampton Court; the lease has 128 years left to run. And the service charge? £300 a year. Not bad for a place that literally has Hampton Court on the doorstep.

Stud House is for sale through Knight Frank and Savills at £25 million.

In 1949, a 16-year-old schoolboy went down to the races at Lewes, and placed a three-horse accumulator bet The stake was £10 — about £300 in today's terms, a wild amount to place on a longshot.

All three horses came in, netting that schoolboy, Jimmy Goldsmith, £8,000; that's the equivalent of over £250,000 in 2026 terms. 'A man of my means should not remain a schoolboy,' he declared at a celebration dinner once he was back at Eton. True to his word, he left school immediately, and Sir James Goldsmith went on to become one of the most successful — and most controversial — businessmen in Britain. And also France, Mexico and Spain, all places where he kept homes at various times of his life,. and with various of the women and children with which he shared that life.

Top of the list of the women in his life is Lady Annabel Goldsmith, a woman every bit as celebrated and flamboyant as her husband, and the radiant society darling after whom Annabel's nightclub is named. Both Jimmy and Annabel were married to other people when their affair began in the mid 1960s; but the affair became a long-term relationship when they started a family and bought a home in the 1970s. That home was the magnificent Ormeley Lodge in Ham, between Richmond Park and the River Thames — and it's just come to the market via Knight Frank and Sotheby's International Realty.

It's an extraordinary house by any yardstick. Grade II*-listed, described by Pevsner as 'exquisite' and dating back to the early 18th century, this Queen Anne home is a ten-bedroom house which, in the words of the agents, 'embodies both English Baroque and Classical styles, characterised by high ceilings, grand proportions and a wonderful sense of light throughout.'

With ten bedrooms, glorious formal gardens and endless elegant details, it is a true country house in London, with a list of former residents that includes politicians, diplomats, aristocrats and even an antique clock dealer, Ronald Alfred Lee, who used the place both as his home and his business premises, with his wares displayed throughout the many glorious reception rooms.

In the Goldsmith era the house was very much Lady Annabel's home, with her huge circle of well-connected friends attending parties which are legendary. Ben Goldsmith, younger brother to Jemima and Zach, told The Times that it was't unlike growing up in a 'commune', that was 'part convalescent home, part heartbreak hotel, children’s nursery, teenage marijuana den, Harrods toy department at Christmas, Portuguese soap opera,' with the Portuguese connection coming in large part from the long-serving staff at the home.

One of those taking refuge was Diana, Princess of Wales: 'She was incredibly close with my mother for the last decade of her life,' Ben adds. 'She was there constantly, lying by the pool.' Two of Ben's Eton schoolmates also visited regularly: Prince William and Prince Harry, now HRH the Prince of Wales and the Duke of Sussex.

Jemima Goldsmith, Ben's older sister, also brought A-list connections: she dated Hugh Grant for several years, and married Imran Khan, the Pakistan cricket legend who became his country's prime minister. Khan remained on good terns with the family, and after his divorce from Jemina lived in a cottage on the grounds.

Lady Annabel's death last year at the age of 2025, however, brought the era to and end, prompting the Goldsmith children to put the place on the market. 'Ormeley Lodge has been our much-loved family home for 50 years, the setting for countless happy memories,' they said in a joint statement.

'We now feel the time is right to pass the property onto its next custodian, and we hope it will be enjoyed and cherished as much as it has been by our family.'

Knight Frank's Paddy Dring echoes that statement, and underlines what a special property it is:

'The sale of Ormeley Lodge represents a rare chance to acquire not only a remarkable residence, but also a part of British cultural heritage. Lovingly maintained over the past 50 years, we expect the property’s unique history to resonate strongly with discerning buyers around the world. Opportunities to secure a house of this size and character, surrounded by such established, picturesque and expansive gardens in a London setting are very uncommon, so it is certainly an exciting proposition for any prospective owner.'

Ormeley Lodge is for sale via Knight Frank and Sotheby's International Realty.

Strawberry Hill remains the undisputed icon of the Gothic Revival movement. Built by Horace Walpole from 1749 (making it, technically, a precursor to the current which it helped to create), the jet-white edifice conceals a dark and moody interior that was designed to accommodate Walpole’s collection of antiquaries. He referred to this particular decorative style as ‘gloomth’ — warmth and gloom coming together in harmony.

These days, house buyers prefer to err on the side of light rather than dark — but occasionally we come across the home that manages to do a little of both. That is emphatically the case with a house just down the river from Walpole's home, in the beautifully-named Strawberry Vale. Here, a double-fronted Victorian home is up for sale at £4.75 million with Dexters and Inigo. This six-bedroom villa is flooded with light, but its bold colour scheme brings the gloomth to striking effect.

The house, with its long garden that trails right down to the Thames, forms part of a conservation area comprising nine other houses. and spread across four floors, with a beautifully preserved porte-cochère leading to the raised ground floor.

A glass-covered awning connects the street to the building, where each storey, save for the attic floor, is blessed with at least four or five street-facing windows — and there are even more at the back.

The proportions are vast, with the first floor dedicated to the master suite (complete with a walk-in wardrobe and a balcony) and a guest room.

The ground floor has a gym, plant room, cinema room and a store leading to the garden. Three bedrooms, with a lateral balcony, occupy the second (and top) floor.

These are, as industry parlance goes, very good bones indeed. The current interiors, the world of interior designer Claire Botha, are bold, flamboyant, and a decidedly 21st century take on Walpole’s vision of handsome riverside villas with cosy, moody interiors.

Some elements are timeless and classic: the front door, decked out in stained-glass windows; the exposed brick wall in the kitchen; the elegantly-tiled master bathroom with panelling and a mantlepiece. But safe to say that the look won't be for everyone.

Proximity to Teddington and glorious Richmond Park should typically lure buyers with an appreciation for period finishings.

The riverside garden, 150-ft long, comes with private mooring and a boathouse — both real rarities this close to central London. Parties here will be a thing of beauty. It is perfect for a large family, with one or two dogs.

For sale at £4.75 million through Dexters and Inigo.

It's that time of year again, when the eyes of the world turn to a leafy corner of south-west London: Wimbledon.

The world's oldest tennis tournament came from unlikely beginnings: the All England Croquet Club needed a way to boost their coffers to pay for a new roller, and thus decided to hold a championship in the then-new-fangled sport of lawn tennis. Almost 150 years later (the sesquicentennial is in 2027) it is still the best tournament in tennis, and an irresistible spectacle — both for tennis-watching and people-watching.

It's also the most astonishing possible advertisement for the joys of living in Wimbledon, a part of London that has some beautiful homes, excellent schools, a lively atmosphere, superb links in and out of London and, of course, huge amounts of green space. All those factors make it an expensive place to live, with an average house price around £900,000. But a property is for sale right now that costs fifteen times that amount: Old Warren Farm, which is being sold by Savills and Russell Simpson at £13.5 million.

That is a lot of money, but in an area where a detached family home can cost over £7 million (here's an example) and even a three-bed semi goes into seven-figure territory, it's hardly a surprise. What is a surprise, however, is that Old Warren Farm isn't just a house, but a full on 17th century farmhouse complex with a string of separate houses, a barn, outdoor pool, stables and woodland.

And yes, it does of course have a tennis court — albeit a hard court, rather than a grass court.

The grounds are big by Wimbledon standards at two acres, but that's not the sort of space you'd normally put in the 'country estate' bracket. There was farmland here once but it was sold off over the years (a fair portion of it now houses the Royal Wimbledon Golf Club).

What does make it feel like a country estate is that it's accessed via a track, sits amid protected land, and while it's not part of Wimbledon Common itself, it is immediately adjacent. Not only is that wonderful for walking, running, cycling, horse riding, golf, picnicking and more, it also means that you're about as protected as you can be from having your rus in urbe vibes upset by new buildings popping up around you.

As mentioned above, there's more than one house within the property: the original farmhouse, with a fountain outside the front door, has four bedrooms set over three floors. It's the oldest of the buildings, full of character and charm, with exposed beams, lattice windows and huge fireplaces.

Wych Elm, meanwhile, is a separate two-bedroom house, which the agents note is perfect 'for staff or guests'. And then there's The Lodge, a four-bedroom, family home with its own gated driveway and separate gardens.

There's also a converted barn — an ideal party spot — as well as several other outbuildings, all of which add to that mini-estate feel.

The agents certainly double-down on the 'country estate in town' angle: 'Old Warren Farm is a one of a kind property — a country estate discreetly located within one of London’s most desirable villages,' says Cory Askew of Savills, while Leo Russell of Russell Simpson calls it, 'a remarkably secluded country estate.'

'Despite its peaceful and almost rural setting, it lies just eight miles from the centre of the capital,' adds Russell. 'Its unique character and surroundings will appeal to those who value heritage and are seeking peace, privacy and nature.'

Which nearly says it all: we'd say peace, privacy, nature... and tennis.

Old Warren Farm is for sale through Savills and Russell Simpson at £13.5 million.

Estate agents have a long and storied history of rebranding areas to elevate their profile. The most famous example for this is in New York, where the neighbourhood once known as Greenwich Village was later divided by salesmen into East and West. Why so? Because the area known as Alphabet City, stretching from Avenues A to D and Houston to 14th Streets, was once impossible to sell a house in due to a notorious crime rate. The solution, agents found, was to squash the eastern stretch of Greenwich Village and Alphabet City together and rename it. Thus, the East Village was born. The median sale price per square foot in the district now stands at $1,520 (£1,153 at the time of writing).

London agents have more recently begun referring to Battersea as South Chelsea. They’re only half-joking (irony, after all, is a covetable currency this side of the pond), for Battersea has had a major glow-up these past few years, catering to a market that enjoys proximity to the King’s Road without wanting to face the onslaught of crowds from the minute they leave the house — or, indeed, find themselves too close to Chelsea Stadium. In good news for fans of the area with £16 million to spare, the neighbourhood’s finest home is now for sale via Savills: Old Battersea House, a wonderfully private old manor home with seven bedrooms and a lawned garden, looking every bit the country seat despite its central London location.

The house is believed to have been completed in 1699 for naval administrator Samuel Pett and is rumoured to have been designed by Sir Christopher Wren. Such undocumented claims are always tricky to assess, but it does look remarkably like a smaller version of building that definitely was by Wren: Kensington Palace.

The house ended up serving as a teacher training college between 1840 and 1926, and was known as Terrace House up until 1931, when it was rechristened Old Battersea House by then-custodian Wilhelmina Stirling.

Stirling is perhaps better known under the pseudonym she used as a writer and collector, Percival Pickering, and for being the sister of Evelyn de Morgan, pre-Raphaelite artist and wife of William de Morgan. The latter was himself a celebrated potter and close friend of William Morris, and Stirling later founded the De Morgan Foundation, to date the largest collection of works by the couple. This was after using the Battersea home as a monument to their work: every wall or surface was decorated with an original De Morgan for more than 30 years — until her tenure ended.

Country Life published an article in in 1932, taking photographs which preserve what it looked like at the time. The writer of the piece? Anna Marie Diana Wilhelmina Stirling herself. In the article, she also tackles the Wren connection, discussing similarities both internal and external between Old Battersea House and Kensington Palace, as well as the Royal Hospital Chelsea, another Wren masterpiece.

Today, more modern (though no less glamorous) inflections adorn the walls of the historic home. Among its attributes are Loro Piana curtains, panelled drawing rooms and operational fireplaces. The master bathroom boasts a lantern pendant while the study is dotted here and there with elegant antiques. Its classic appeal speaks volumes of the restoration projects undertaken by the architecturally sensitive owners who followed Stirling’s stewardship.

After her death in 1965, the house was left to while away for years before American businessman Malcolm Forbes — founder of the eponymous magazine — acquired it in 1970. His family’s own art collection, grown and housed in Battersea over four decades, made headlines of its own when the family attempted to sell £5 million worth of art in 2012.

Fittingly, much of their collection harked back to the Pre-Raphaelites, with paintings by Edward Burne-Jones part of the sale. With 10,000 square feet of space across the property, this home will no doubt appeal to similarly lofty patrons. During his time there, Forbes greeted many visitors, including members of the Royal family and his close friend Elizabeth Taylor.

Original baroque interiors and sweeping staircases have been preserved, while London’s only licensed heliport is handily close by. After all, anyone dropping £16 million on a home is more likely to use this method of transportation than most. Another transport option is found at nearby Cadogan Pier, at the foot of the Albert Bridge, from whence passengers can take the riverbus to London Bridge in just under 30 minutes. No traffic to contend with here — unless, of course, you take the vintage convertible Mercedes instead (it's not listed as part of the sale, but you can always ask if it could be popped in to sweeten the deal...).

Of course there’s a private gym, a cinema room, a modernised kitchen, and all the hallmarks of a modern superhome. The gym in particular is fascinating, with its collection of art sitting alongside the various bits of equipment.

As in all good homes, however, it is the bedrooms that take the biscuit. Four poster beds, high ceilings and elegant floorboards give an impression not only of continuity and serenity, but of living in a country home.

The country house feeling extends to the setting. Shrouded in foliage from the lawn garden that surrounds the property, the views here are Arcadian: a far cry from the grit of nearby Zone 1.

Old Battersea House is for sale via Savills — see more details.

The phrase 'if these walls could talk' feels like it could have been coined with Number 41, Carlton Hill in mind. This beautiful period home — for sale through Aston Chase at £4.25 million — sits on one of the most sought-after streets in St John's Wood, and was for years the London home of Eric Idle, the actor, writer, musician and comedian who was one of the founding members of Monty Python.

Idle is one of the rare creatures able to pull off the trick of being both naturally funny and musically gifted (see also: Victoria Wood, Dudley Moore and Hugh Laurie), and it's hard not to wonder if he sat in this very kitchen while first humming the tune for Always Look on the Bright Side of Life, the unforgettable, blackly-comic song at the end of Monty Python's Life of Brian.

Idle, incidentally, is credited with coming up with the idea for the film: the story goes that a journalist kept badgering him about the Pythons' third movie, a film which the group hadn't even thought about yet. He flippantly replied that it would be called Jesus Christ: Lust for Glory — and from that seed, the iconic parallel life fable emerged.

Life of Brian came out in 1979, a time when the Pythons were at the height of their fame — and Idle often hosted A-list friends at his St John's Wood pads (he owned two houses on the street), from the cast of Star Wars (a story Idle told on television in 2018) to The Rolling Stones.

Some of those friends stayed even longer. Carrie Fisher, Princess Leia in the Star Wars films, rented the house for a few months in 1979 while she was in London filming The Empire Strikes Back at Elstree Studios, and Idle was away making Life of Brian. Her co-star (and one-time lover) Harrison Ford himself rented the house a couple of years later, while shooting the studio scenes for Raiders of the Lost Ark, also up at Elstree.

The home itself is a classic London townhouse, with a façade of white stucco and brick, with elegant sash windows and fine proportions.

Inside, it's deceptively large, set over four floors — with the main living space being the 30ft kitchen-dining-family room space on the garden floor, which opens out through a garden room to the outside space.

The first floor is almost entirely taken up by a huge drawing room, which has a terrace at one end, though there's also a separate study at the back of the house.

The four bedrooms are split across the first and second floors — though no evenly. The first floor is entirely taken up by the principal bedrooms, with its dressing room and huge en-suite bathroom. All three remaining bedrooms are above, as is a smaller bathroom.

There's also a surprise lurking at the base of the house: the lower ground floor has been set up as a space that's ideal for any successful actor: it's a gym by day, and a home cinema by night. What more could any iconic movie star wish for?

The house on Carlton Hill, St John's Wood, London is for sale through Aston Chase — see more details.

There’s an argument to be made that many little boys, if they grew up to be men with more money than sense, would build their own Batman-style lair. And that, I presume, is what happened to the Anglo-Russian tech billionaire Sergey Frolovichev. His London mansion, now on the market with Draper London, has its very own secret ‘Batcave’ in the basement.

The £29.95 million mansion's basement was inspired by Frolovichev’s favourite film, The Dark Night. Previously instrumental in the inner workings of dating apps Bumble and Badoo, the business man’s property is located in Greenaway Gardens in Hampstead. It was designed by architects and interior designers at SHH.

The 1,347 square metre property has seven bedrooms, a media room and health spa, in addition to its superhero selling point. A secret entrance concealed by retracting floorboards welcomes you to the former, just for more pizazz. There is also a swimming pool that drains to become a dance floor, wonderfully convenient for if you ever intended on having a paddle. but suddenly find the urge to break out into a paso doble mid-stroke.

The house was originally built by English architect Chalres Henry Bourne Quennell in around 1934. The majority of his original Arts and Crafts-style design details have since been lost.

Craig Draper of Draper London calls the property a ‘unique trophy mansion… that will appeal to an ultra-high-net-worth individual.'

If you are not a The Dark Night fan, however, no bother. May I, instead, propose a different tech millionaire mansion on the other side of the pond. In California, 600, Moore Road, Woodside, is on the market for a guide price of $14.9 million (about £11.08 million) — and it has no connection to Batman at all.

Instead it has been inspired by the French sense of art de vivre, a nod to its owner’s heritage — not a natural bedfellow to the global epicentre of technology and venture capital, but there you have it.

Global tech investor Jeff Clavier and his wife Bernadette, formerly a director from Stanford's Graduate School of Business, have taken an anti-Frolovichev approach, choosing to restore the hidden grandeur from the property’s past. Featuring a stone villa, cottage, guest house, detached fitness center and ample gardens, there’s not much this property doesn’t have (except a Batcave, the couple instead chose to convert the basement into a 3,000-bottle temperature controlled cellar. Much more chic, in my humble opinion). It also has a pool, tennis court and, from the look's of the listing, a golf course.

Set across 3.2 acres, former residents of Woodside include Steve Jobs and Michelle Pfeiffer — but not Bruce Wayne. Bernadette describes the property ‘a magical and sophisticated family heaven.’

If you can’t decide between the two, may I suggest purchasing both? Sunny French-inspired days in the tech hub of the world when visiting California, and rainy weeks nerding out in the Batcave in London. You really can have it all, for a price.

Covered in glorious wisteria, could you find a more picturesque property in London than this family home in Wimbledon? I doubt it. ‘The location of this unique house is incredibly special,’ says property agent Cory Askew, and he’s not wrong. Close enough to central London to be convenient, but far enough away to remain leafy and peaceful.

The house comes with a modern kitchen, complete with a large skylight for letting in plenty of sunshine and a dining room that looks across the 0.5 acre garden. It also comes with a more than adequate heated outdoor swimming pool complete with its own pool house, perfect for cooling off during this sweltering weather.

For chillier days, not that we’ve been having many of those lately, the house also comes with a steam room. With Wimbledon Windmill museum as a neighbour, from the property’s garden you can admire a rather marvellous (you’ve guessed it) windmill. The house is also right by Putney Heath and plenty of other green spaces, such as Wimbledon Park.

Originally known as Millers Cottage and built circa. 1815, this house on Windmill Road, in Wimbledon, London, has a guide price of £7,500,000 and is on the market with Savills.

The six-bedroom, four-bathroom home spans approximately 495.8 square metres and also boasts a cinema room, for watching the tennis at Wimbledon this year. Alternatively, just pop round the corner and see it in real life. It’s hardly far…

This property on Windmill Road is on the market with Savills.

A stone’s throw from the chaos of the City and the bustle of Liverpool Street is a network of streets that feels mercifully stuck in time. A portal to the 17th century, when hoards of Huguenots descended upon London fleeing religious persecution, the cobbled alleys that make up the area known as Spitalfields are among the most beautiful in the capital.

Rental opportunities are rare, and sales even rarer. Once you buy here, you stay here: be you Tracey Emin, Gilbert & George, or another artistic grandee who's been lucky enough to call this patch their stomping ground for the past three decades (or longer). But an opportunity has just arisen in the form of this house on Wilkes Street, which is on the market at £4.75 million through the Unique Property Company.

Wilkes Street, which runs parallel to bustling Commercial Road and draws together Hanbury and Fournier Streets, is among the most picture-perfect in the district. With red brick façades, outdoor shop signage from 18th century and sash windows painted black, red or sage, it could easily feel like a toy town were it not for the rough edges that still lend the area that little bit of grit — a reminder of its past a centre for slum housing (when its fortunes turned in the 19th and early 20th centuries) as well as a welcome departure from fellow post-gentrified neighbourhoods on the western edge of Zone One, which some might describe as over-manicured.

The house now for sale on Wilkes Street is a Grade II-listed townhouse dating back to 1720. It was, for 150 years, a furrier’s factory — a time when much of its fine detailing was hidden away. This has since been rediscovered and restored, bringing to life a home that thrums with history and embodies, on each of its five floors, different elements of the English architectural character.

Unfolding over 2,244 sq ft and on the market for £4.75 million, it is one of few homes that still retains an original weavers' loft (the Huguenots who settled in the area were highly skilled cloth merchants). Hawksmoor’s Christ Church, one of London's most magnificent churches, can be seen from the makeshift balcony jetting out from the top floor.

'Ground–floor shutters, door casements and canopy are a faithful reproduction of the joinery that would once have hugged the deep red brickwork,' say the agents, while 'the heavy panelled front door appears to be original.'

Not every original feature has survived. A fanlight which is likely to have sat in the living room has since been replaced with a leaded light. The current owners, however, have been careful to preserve as much of the building's history as possible. Boxed-in candle arrangements hark to a pre-electric passé while original fireplaces and floorboards still course throughout the house — safe for the lower-ground floor, decked out in handsome York stone.

There are four bedrooms overall, two of which are in the attic floor — although Unique Property Company notes that applications for an additional bedroom could easily be put forward (and has been done in the past). There are three bathrooms and as many reception rooms: a home as perfect for entertaining as it is for living.

No doubt the pièce de résistance, however, is the walled garden at the rear of the house, accessed via bridge across two ornamental ponds. It is, per Unique Property Company, 'a small world of its own'. At the far end, a beautifully time-worn door opens into a storage room, 'once part of the night soil alley that slipped along the backs of the houses,' the sales agent notes. It now presents future owners with an opportunity for renovation. Let us hope they keep this sensitive.

For sale through The Unique Property Company at £4.75 million — see more details.

This is an expanded profile of a property on Wilkes Street which first appeared in Country Life's 'Seven of the best' spread on May 6, 2026. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.

Anyone walking down the upmarket high street of London’s St John’s Wood on February 6, 2012, will have noticed something unusual taking place. All 109 horses that make up the King’s Troop Royal Horse Artillery were walking to their new £16 million, purpose-built home in Woolwich Garrison. The day marked the end of over 200 years of military presence in NW8 and 2,500 school children, along with 400 veterans and locals, lined the route, which was decorated with bunting and flags.

Alongside its operational roles, the King’s Troop carries out ceremonial duties such as firing gun salutes and providing a gun carriage for state funerals. Being based in St John’s Wood was handy as Buckingham Palace was a 40-minute hack from the barracks. Soldiers and their horses could regularly be seen riding in the leafy streets of the affluent neighbourhood and the sound of their reveilles was a feature of the community. The site had been home to a military riding school since 1825 and used exclusively by the Royal Horse Artillery since 1880. According to one report, in the mid 1850s, 228 men were living at the barracks — with a single bath.

After the Second World War, the artillery was mechanised, but George VI wanted to keep a troop of horse artillery mounted and so formed the King’s Troop, Royal Horse Artillery, in 1947. When Elizabeth II acceded to the throne five years later, she insisted it should remain in her father’s name in recognition of her father’s special interest in the Troop. Today, the Troop takes precedence over all other regiments and parades and it's always on the right of the line of the British Army.

The lease on the barracks, granted by the Eyre Estate, expired in March 2012 and the 5.5-acre site was put up for sale. It was bought by the late Malaysian entrepreneur Ananda Krishnan — the force behind Kuala Lumpur’s iconic Petronas Towers — for a reported £250 million with a view to developing it into a new residential space in one of his favourite parts of London. Following several years in planning and development, sales at the 120-home residential square will launch in the autumn.

At the heart of St John’s Squire is the Grade II-listed riding school, which has been carefully preserved and will form the community’s residence club. The structure was completed by Royal Engineers in 1825 and has had numerous visits from members of the Royal Family, including Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother, Elizabeth II, Prince Philip, The Duke of Edinburgh, Diana The Princess of Wales, Princess Anne and Prince Charles before he became King.

Former officer and Honorary Colonel of the King’s Troop, Major General Matthew Sykes, is taking an active role in shaping the future of St John’s Wood Square and was a serving officer when many of these visits took place. He remembers the final visit from Elizabeth II in 2011, where she underlined the word King’s Troop in the visitor’s book. When he heard that a sale of the land had been agreed, Sykes approached Krishnan to see if the history of the site could be woven into its new chapter. ‘I had an idea that the company was going to build something very special in a very special part of London. The Royal Horse Artillery was stationed there for over 100 years and I wanted to ensure that, in 100 years, people would understand that history.’

The initiative paid off. Architects Wilkinson Eyre (co-founder Jim Eyre is chairman of the Eyre Estate family trust) and heritage experts Walter Lily have spent just under three years restoring the riding school. The structure had to be secured to allow a team of Irish miners to dig a basement underneath; upon completion, it will be home to a 65-foot swimming pool and spa. The vast, 20-metre-long oak beams that span the width of the building — which Sykes remembers seeing from the floor of the school, having been thrown off his horse for the nth time — were cleaned and repaired while the roof was laid with nearly 13,000 Welsh slate tiles. A clock tower, which previously had just one face, was sent to specialist restorers Smith of Derby and now has four new faces. Two new street names are being introduced to the maps of London: King George VI Avenue and King’s Terrace — an exercise which required special dispensation from Buckingham Palace.

‘They aren’t paying lip service to the history of the site,’ continues Sykes. ‘That’s obvious from the tremendous care that’s been put into the restoration of the riding school, which looks better than it ever did. To me, it feels like the team is trying to create somewhere that people will be proud to live — somewhere that has soul.’

The scheme is spearheaded by Sir George Iacobescu, former chairman of Canary Wharf Group, and led by CEO Gareth Stow. While the launch is likely to draw some comparisons with Chelsea Barracks, Stow is quick to point out the differences. ‘It’s a much smaller site for one thing [Chelsea Barracks is 12.8 acres], there are only 120 properties compared with over 500 at Chelsea and it’s also a very different part of London. While everyone knows Chelsea, St John’s Wood is a bit of a hidden gem. Those who live there love it for its fresh air, proximity to Primrose Hill and Regent’s Park and quiet, residential streets — and the fact that it’s understated.’

Knight Frank recently identified St John’s Wood High Street as the second best in the UK after Wimbledon Village. The popular American School in London is just opposite the main entrance to St John’s Wood Square and is anticipated to draw buyers to the new homes. ‘The area attracts sophisticated, well-educated and well-travelled residents who like the fact that they aren’t in the hustle and bustle of areas like Mayfair,’ says Stow.

The architecture and scale of the new houses, designed by Squire & Partners, deliberately ape the terraces of Georgian and Victorian properties that surround the site and over half of the site is made up of gardens designed by Chelsea award-winning designer Andy Sturgeon. ‘We are custodians of a special site in a beautiful area of London,’ says Stow. ‘As an asset, we know we’ve got to respect the opportunity. We think that we’re setting the highest standard of quality for a new residential development.’

Sales at St John’s Wood Square will launch in the autumn of 2026. Visit the website for more information.

The west London district of Kew Gardens is known, broadly, for three things: the eponymous green space that serves as a national HQ for botanical research; the site of the National Archives; and a neat little bypass for drivers looking to find a way around Hammersmith Bridge (which has been closed to vehicles for exactly seven years and five days).

Yet all this is to underplay Kew’s hidden potential as a west London property behemoth. Cast your eye around the place and you’ll find leafy, understated streets, Georgian terraces that whisper more than they shout, and none of the odd concrete moments that exist — yes, I’m sorry — in better-known, more reputed neighbourhoods such as Richmond or Wimbledon.

As the London market once more turns in favour of buyers, those looking for a family-friendly neighbourhood within easy reach of both town and country (Kew Gardens is served by the District and Mildmay lines) could hardly do better than to set down roots here.

All of which brings us to Kew House, on sale at £4 million through Story of Home, and one of the most impressive properties on the London market at the time of writing.

Designed in 2014 by Piercy & Co and the winner of a RIBA award the following year, the house mines inspiration from the sculptures of Lynn Chadwick and the architectural character of TW9, unfolding over 4,144 sq ft with a glazed stairwell and glass bridge, which connects one side of the property to the other.

This hems the new building, clad in pre-weathered Corten steel, together with the remnants of a Victorian stable block. ‘The judges were impressed with the ambition and fearlessness of the house,' the RIBA National Award judges said of the edifice, 'with a look that avoids referencing architectural convention’.

The house has been renovated since the initial 2014 design and fitted with more understated yet still inviting interiors that are perfect for the sort of family who prefer their art collection to do the talking.

A sunken snug, one metre below ground and featuring exposed brickwork, built-in oak-veneer cabinetry and a fireplace, creates a prime spot for entertaining.

Occupying the upper floors are two interlinked children’s bedrooms, a guest room and the principal suite.

Sadly, though, one of the more eyebrow-raising features of the original house is gone: there used to be a slide down to the basement. Owners Tim (a structural engineer) and Jo (a management consultant) had it installed when their children were younger, but it's no longer in place. We'd be strongly in favour of restoring it.

Kew House is for sale at £4 million, reduced from an initial £4.5 million — see more details.

Encircling The Regent’s Park and Primrose Hill, Prince Albert Road straddles two of north London’s most desirable postcodes. NW8 is the quieter, more stately neighbourhood, while NW1 — edging into Chalk Farm and Camden Town — is a sprightlier area, abuzz with good shops, good coffee and (at least this time of year) a wealth of pollinators. You get it: it’s green. It’s sexy. There is a park with hilltop views of London’s skyline and lovely pubs, as well as some of the best Middle Eastern bakeries anywhere in the city.

Matthew Freud and Elisabeth Murdoch used to live here, as did Jude Law and Sadie Frost, Noel Gallagher, and Kate Moss. They’ve moved on now, which is just as well, because they held very loud parties during school nights which their neighbours found annoying. Yet the ton still flocks here at the weekend during daylight hours, to keep things interesting. Good news for prospective residents keen to dip their toe in the spotlight and leave it at that.

But how to capture such a sentiment through architecture and interiors? What does a house that dips a toe into the spotlight, but is just as content retreating from view, look like? Chic, that’s what. And on Prince Albert Road, no less. The Camden end, obviously. The fun end.

All of which leads us to this house, on sale for £6.35 million with Ian Green Residential, and one of the finest houses to hit the Primrose Hill market in years. Six bedrooms, three bathrooms, off-street parking and a whopping 3,581 sq ft of space.

The facade is classic white stucco, shrouded in foliage — a large olive tree in the front garden and a magnolia-lined walkway to the front door give the feel of an oasis — and one enters to find a majestic hallway dressed with grey marble floors, statement artworks and high ceilings, which are present throughout the house.

Natural light is abundant, too, with no fewer than three windows enshrining the principal living room, which retains original cornicing.

The floorboards are reclaimed wood, in a handsome, greyish brown, and an eight-foot-tall bookcase offers an elegant transition into the kitchen and dining room (the table easily sits eight people).

It does so through a door-sized gap that serves as a kind of architectural interregnum. The wooden floors flow seamlessly from one room into the other, just as the gardens flow seamlessly around the house.

The kitchen itself is decked out in just the right amount of white marble and stainless steel, while a smart, stripy runner fixed to the white-painted staircase leads up the sleeping quarters, which include built-in wardrobes and original fireplaces. There is yet more cornicing here, but the decor has broadly been kept to a minimum, to the Feng-shui clean and flowing.

The principal bathroom stands out, in particular, with abundant light and mirrors giving the illusion that the proportions are even more handsome than they already are. Life hack, etc.

A cast-iron decorative trellis, painted white, makes for a statement transition to the top floor, where further bedrooms await. It lends an art nouveau parenthesis to an otherwise classically designed home, with all the contemporary amenities and reupholstering to boot.

If it wasn’t already the perfect house: there’s more. Transport links, a make-or-break factor for anyone shopping around the city, are exceptional: Chalk Farm, the nearest station, is on the northern line (two stops to Euston and three to King’s Cross) while the Jubilee Line, which takes one straight to Westminster, Southwark and, beyond that, to Canary Wharf, is also nearby: a walk across the hill to St John’s Wood or Swiss Cottage stations. A particularly inviting commute, at this time of year.

For sale via Ian Green Residential — see more details.

The annual Oxford vs Cambridge University Boat Race is upon us, and that prompts three obvious questions. Who will win? Why do people who didn't go to Oxford or Cambridge care who wins? And what would it be like to live in one of those lovely houses you see them row past?

I definitely can't help with question one, and question two has always puzzled me too — but care people do. Millions tune in to watch each year, and I suppose that rooting for an arbitrary seat of learning that you didn't go to is no different to, say, Liverpool FC having millions of fans who've never set foot on Merseyside.

Question three, though, is right in the Country Life sweetspot. So, ahead of the event that is officially entitled The CHANEL J12 Boat Race, here's a look at six of those lovely houses on the banks of the Boat Race route from Putney to Mortlake on the River Thames.

Putney Bridge — £4,950,000

This grand and beautiful sitting room has a wonderful view of the Thames at Putney, where the race begins.

But this is a home that has far more to offer than just its proximity to the River Thames: three storeys and over 3,000sq ft of space is a rare find in this part of London — the agents call it 'waterfront living at its absolute best'.

For sale via Savills — see more details and pictures.

Fulham — £3,250,000

For Boat Race fans, there is surely only thing better than being able to watch the action while literally still in bed — and that is to do so while in your house on Oxbridge Terrace.

The three-bedroom house is one of five in this converted building right on the waterfront with uninterrupted views of the River Thames. It's also close to the action, and in particular Munster Village, a small area of boutique cafes and shops.

For sale via Nested — see more details.

Hammersmith Bridge, Chiswick side — £2,500,000

You really can just sit on your own sofa and see the Boat Race go by from this house in a little enclave in Chiswick called Strand-on-the-Green. It's the sort of charming, tucked away London spot where Richard Curtis should set a rom-com.

The house is just as quirky and fun as you'd hope of what is as close as you'll find to a beach house on the Thames, though there's a bit of work to be done.

For sale via Knight Frank — see more details and pictures.

Hammersmith Bridge, Barnes side — £1,350,000

Barnes is one of the loveliest — but also one of the priciest — parts of south-west London, so to find a home this close to the waterside at 'only' £1.35 million is actually pretty good, particularly when it's a mansion flat of great quality.

As the pictures show, it's beautifully kept, has three balconies, and access to the communal gardens. The mature trees add to the beauty of those gardens — and given that the Boat Race usually takes place before the leaves come out, you'll still get a good view of the action on the water each year.

For sale via Chestertons — see more details and pictures.

Chiswick — £5,250,000

Okay, so you can't see the river from the main living space in this gorgeous Chiswick house — but what a great place to sit while watching it on TV. And then, as the rowers approach, you can dash out to the balcony and enjoy this fabulous river view.

A house this size, in this postcode, with this big of a garden is a real treat — and probably the pick of the homes on this page for life on the other 51 non-Boat Race weeks of the year.

For sale via Knight Frank — see more details and pictures.

Mortlake — £825,000

Finishing on a high note — for Boat Race on-the-nose terms, if not for plushness of accommodation — is this two-bedroom flat in Boatrace Court. Really. That's what it's called: Boatrace Court, and it has a sensational view of the River Thames at Mortlake.

It may not be the prettiest buildings, but it does have over 1,200sq ft, two bedrooms and a substantially more affordable price tag than the other homes on this page — and the best view of the finish line.

For sale via Chestertons — see more details and pictures.

In 1851, a young Yorkshireman named William Whiteley came to London to see the Great Exhibition. Bowled over by what he saw, he resolved to come back as soon as he could. Within the year, he returned, with £10 in his pocket and determined to make his fortune.

This modern Dick Whittington started small, working for a drapery in the City until 1863, when he determined that he'd learned enough — and saved enough — to open his own business. The result was Whiteleys, at 31 Westbourne Grove, where Notting Hill meets Bayswater.

Four years later, he'd expanded his small drapery into a row of 17 shops. Within its first decade, Whiteleys was employing over 1,500 people, building a department store that was one of the largest and grandest in the world.

The shop's name became a byword for shopping in style. P.G. Wodehouse refers to it in several of his stories, and when Professor Henry Higgins seds Eliza Dolittle in My Fair Lady to go out and buy a new dress, he he instructs her not go to Harrods or Selfridges, but to Whiteleys.

With the ups came downs, not least several fires — the worst of which, in 1887, gutted the original premises

Whiteley bounced back quickly, building the current site: an emporium on Queensway which was said to be the largest in the world. Queen Victoria herself was a fan: the shop was awarded an unsolicited Royal Warrant in 1890, an unprecedented move at the time for the turreted and domed silhouette established itself as a prime landmark, celebrated in the novels of P. G. Wodehouse as well as George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion.

But tragedy still played a part in the history of the shop. In 1907, William Whiteley was shot dead at the age of 75 by man claiming to be his illegitimate son. The murder took place in Whiteley's own shop.

The shop continued to flourish for half a century in its founders absence, but would end up struggling in the second half of the 20th century. The so-called ‘Harrods of Bayswater’ suffered in the post-war years and closed in 1981.

Despite re-emerging as a shopping centre in 1989, the retail future for the Grade II-listed building looked bleak and it closed for a major redevelopment in 2018.

Following a £1.5 billion makeover by Foster + Partners, the building, now renamed The Whiteley, has been converted into a 139 apartments. And very swish they are too.

To date, 76% of residences have sold, but some prime homes are still available — among them a two-bedroom duplex apartment designed by Maoliosa Murray with Art Deco influences. It's on the market for £8.95 million via Knight Frank and Savills.

There are plenty of other options still for sale, too — not least the five-bedroom penthouse with a terrace from where you can see the shop's iconic dome. It's on the market at £39.5 million.

On-site amenities include a 20m swimming pool, a gym, a padel court and a Six Senses spa (there are also Six Senses-branded serviced apartments).

It's immensively impressive, and the developers — understandably, given the scale of their investment — are very excited indeed, describing it as 'a complete re-imagining of a historic address of epic scale and proportion, a stone’s throw from Hyde Park,' and adding that it is 'poised to become the capital’s greatest residential and hospitality address.'

There's also good news for those who love the romantic story of London's original department store: The Whiteley will have shops too, with space for 19 retail tenants installed once work is completed.

See more about The Whiteley London or view the property listings at Savills and Knight Frank.

'I’ve always felt that, everything I do, I’m flirting with people’s pain barrier, like a moth to a flame — but I’m always on the right side of that razor-thin line before it tips over into “Oh my God”.’

Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen is famous for his way with interior design, but he's arguably just as gifted with words. The line above was just one of many from an interview he gave to Country Life last year; and six months before that he delivered half an hour's worth of similar bon mots when appearing on the Country Life podcast to declare war on retirement homes that are 'beige coffins' that 'smell of cabbage and wee'.

So when a house comes up for sale that has interiors designed by the most celebrated of the televisual world's interior designers, it's always worth a look. Particularly when the place in question is a six-bedroom, detached Georgian home in one of London's biggest green spaces. It's for sale via Dexter's at £2.5 million.

Built in the 1820s, this 'tea caddy' house — as the agents call it — sits on Blackheath Common, a 200-acre green space that runs from Blackheath Village itself down to Greenwich Park, another similarly huge area. Unusually for London, this is a place of sweeping views and vast skies overhead — and, thanks to Llewelyn-Bowen, that continues inside.

The main living space, you see, has the sort of touch viewers of Changing Rooms used to love: a trompe l'oeil ceiling painted with clouds and sky. Surprisingly, given the flamboyant decorator's CV, there are no angels and cherubs painted around the edges. You could always add them yourself, if you'd prefer the vibe to be less Hogwarts enchanted ceiling and more Sistine Chapel.

The rest of the house, it has to be said, is much more ordinary, and we're not quite sure why. Did the budget only stretch to a single Llewelyn-Bowen room? Has the rest of it been 'put back to normal' in later years? Was this once a place of walls slathered in orange paint, hung with curtains of crushed purple velvet? If so, could it be again?

That is a decision for whoever comes here next, and regardless of decoration the new owners will find themselves in possession of a grand, light, spacious family home. The amount of square footage here is impressive, as is the garden, which can be accessed directly from the open-plan kitchen-diner that dominates the lower ground floor.

The location is also a real plus. Blackheath Village is full of interesting shops and cafés, and a pleasant stroll in the other direction across the common gets you to Greenwich, where there's more of the same. A word of warning: a couple of large roads (and several other small ones) do bisect Blackheath Common, but thankfully this house is shielded from the traffic by a row of trees planted opposite.

For sale via Dexters at £2.5 million — see more details.

Sometimes a string of words just sticks in your head. 'Smoother than a bubble bath with Roger Moore' is stuck in mine, ever since I read it in Adam Hay-Nicholls's piece about a new Rolls-Royce a year or so ago. Every time I see or hear anything about the late, great actor, there it is: 'smoother than a bubble bath with Roger Moore' pops into my head, read (of course) in the cheesy-smarmy-tongue-in-cheek voice of 007 himself.

Moore was more than just Bond, of course: he appeared in over 100 films and TV shows in a career spanning seven decades, and many of the roles (notably The Saint) would have been enough in their own right to make him a household name. But to many, Moore is Bond: he took a role played as tough and sardonic by Sean Connery and while never matching the physicality of his predecessor, he made 007 it smooth, charming and fun.

And so today, with Sir Roger's former London pad on the market, all I can think of is the smoothness of a man dubbed 'one of nature's true gentlemen'. And that leads to one question about his flat: what's the bathtub like?

The answer is this:

The bathtub in question is part of the three-bedroom flat on Eaton Square in Belgravia, a glorious, late-Georgian space that's roughly equidistant from Buckingham Palace, Harrods and Sloane Square. As you might expect, property here doesn't come cheap: this duplex apartment, split over the third and fourth floors of the building, is priced at £5.75 million.

Entire houses here generally sit in the £15 million price bracket, and even for someone as successful as Sir Roger — who was paid £1 million for 1972's Live and Let Die alone — having an apartment is plenty. Especially as it was only a part-time home for a man who, rather famously, became a tax exile in 1978, spending most of the rest of his life in Monaco and Switzerland.

The flat is laid out fairly simply: a spacious hallway with sweeping staircase leads to a large reception room looking out to the front, and a knocked-through kitchen and dining room, with balcony, at the back.

At just under 2,000sq ft it's not a large place, but it's more than the average pied-a-terre, and could happily accommodate a small family.

Above, two of the three bedrooms are en-suite, with the master suite at the back of the house having the aforementioned bathtub.

A bubble bath with Roger Moore wouldn't be particularly smooth today, of course, primarily because he died in 2017 at the age of 89. But his legacy lives on, especially for those who grew up with him as Ian Fleming's iconic creation.

They say your favourite 007 is always the first you ever see reaching for his Walther PPK, and for millions across the world Moore will be the man who defined James Bond. Yet as you'd expect from this old smoothie, his knowing self-deprecation was part of the charm: right to the last, he claimed to have been only the fourth-best actor at playing the part. In terms of pure acting chops, that might be true; but none of the others ever made us smile like Roger did.

Roger Moore's former flat on Eaton Square is for sale at £5.75 million via Knight Frank — see more details.

The English vocabulary is often touted as one of the world’s richest. Yet we still have no word for the feeling of walking into another’s home and realising, to our horror, that we’ve wrongly decorated ours. ‘Regret’ doesn’t quite cover it. ‘Interior envy’ is too limiting. The feeling, to those who’ve experienced it, runs deeper: let’s call it aesthetic inferiority syndrome. Anyway, it’s something I experience each time I consult the website for Inigo (so, daily), a boutique estate agency specialising in the sale of historic homes.

The agency is named after Inigo Jones — the early-modern architect who became one of Britain’s first proponents of Vitruvian principles of strength, utility, beauty — and they're one of the agencies who editorialise their portfolios remarkably well. As in all portfolios, however, there are showstoppers and showstoppers. On sale with Inigo is a six-bedroom, Grade II-listed house on Crooms Hill in Greenwich Park, which is indisputably one of the latter. It’s probably the most beautiful house on sale in London at the time of writing; the asking price is £2.975 million.

The beauty starts before you even step through the door, with (please be sitting down) a walled garden boasting hibiscus, wisteria, peonies and an orchard. Add to that sash windows, pediments and an interior restoration by Matt Whittle, the man behind many of the Huguenot restorations in Spitalfields, and the picture of a perfect London house begins to emerge.

The owners, who oversaw the restoration, commissioned artist Ian Harper to paint wood grain onto the front door, as would have been done in the 18th century. There are Delft tiles in the new DeVol kitchen. Be still, my beating heart. The surroundings are just as impressive as the interiors — Pevsner once described Crooms Hill as ‘the pride of domestic architecture in Greenwich’.

A stone’s throw from the National Maritime Museum (where, coincidentally, Inigo Jones's most famous portrait hangs) and Queen’s House, and four doors down from the Greenwich Theatre, the house backs directly onto the park, one of London’s most elegant green spaces (182 acres that is home to wildflower meadows and more than 70 species of bird).

Across the river towers Canary Wharf, about 22 minutes away on the DLR. The Thameslink connects Greenwich to London Bridge in eight minutes and, beyond that, to Blackfriars, where the District Line ushers you into the West End. It’s also less than 20 minutes by car to London City Airport.

Could it be yours, then? No, no, hands off: it’s mine.

For sale at £2,975,000 via Inigo — see more pictures and details.

This feature originally appeared in the February 4, 2026, issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.

Thames Ditton has been called one of Surrey’s hidden jewels. There are parks and reservoirs, golf clubs and railway stations offering easy access into London, which is just over 10 miles away. For the lucky few, there’s something else: direct access to the River Thames. Few places in Greater London’s urban jungle can offer such a mix. And in the case of River Haven, one of the village’s finest riverside homes, there’s an almost literal slice of jungle on offer: this £2.6 million house has palm trees, exotic flowers in the garden, a characterful wooden house, a tiki-bar in the garden and the sort of verandah where you’d expect to find Ian Fleming or Somerset Maugham writing their latest work on a vintage typewriter.

River Haven is a charmed spot, right on the water, with its own a slipway and a private mooring for a boat. The landscaped rear garden slopes down to the river and a terrace overlooks it, offering the ideal place for moments of quiet reflection or the perfect spot for social gatherings.

The aforementioned verandah is even better: this elevated decking area on the first floor provides riverscapes from a different viewpoint, looking across the water to the parkland that surrounds Hampton Court.

The interior is designed to make the most of these graceful watery perspectives, while the exotic furnishings and fittings (beautifully curated by the current owners, it has to be said) really add to that tropical getaway feel — not bad for a house well within the M25.

But as beautiful as it is inside, it’s the river that remains the star, and everything guides you this way, with the open plan main living space leading straight out onto that terrace. ‘There’s a nautical feeling throughout, which nods to [River Haven’s] spectacular waterside setting,’ says the agent.

For sleeping arrangements, we suspect you’ll be sorely tempted to just string up a hammock in the garden once the sun sets, but for the winter months there’s always plan B in the shape of four bedrooms. There’s a double on the ground floor, two more on the first floor, and one on the mezzanine.

The latter is currently set up as a study, and thus the ideal place to bring your own vintage typewriter (okay, laptop) to keep on working on that tropical thriller once the weather gets too cold.

River Haven is for sale via Hamptons at £2.6 million — see more details.

Much has been written recently about ‘the new Chelsea’, real-estate speak for an area whose fortunes are turning after falling out of favour with the young and beautiful. Some have put the area’s newfound chutzpah down to Martino’s, a recently opened restaurant from the team behind The Dover that has induced a westbound migration among London’s see-and-be-seen foodies. Others have explained it via the pendulum effect: now that Hackney house prices are about the same as Earl’s Court’s, young people have decided that, actually, the Royal Borough ain’t so bad after all.

The true reason, however, comes down to downsizing. Long-time residents of the area have decided they don’t wish to pay mansion tax and are better off converting their houses into flats to sell to plucky youngsters for less than £2 million. This is, ironically, a good thing: it means that supply in central London can finally catch up with demand and that young people are flocking back to areas they’d previously deserted in order to rent before they buy — a test drive, of sorts.

According to the Financial Times, however, we really ought to be looking at ‘the new Notting Hill’: four little words that might well trigger an eye roll, not least because it's not so long ago that Bruton in Somerset had that exact same title conferred upon it. Unlike Bruton, however, the 'new Notting Hill' turns out to be the same old Notting Hill, but experiencing a resurgence in popularity.

As with Chelsea, the tide is once more turning in favour of a younger crowd. On Golborne and Portobello Roads and the perennially fashionable Westbourne Grove is a spree of new shops (sorry, ‘boutiques’) for the clever and the curious — or, at least, those who look the part. Just down the road on Arundel Gardens — one of Notting Hill’s most picture-perfect streets — a pair of apartments are for sale at the moment.

Two bits of good news: firstly, all are way below the mansion tax threshold, and secondly, the pastel-hued buildings beloved by tourists are on the opposite pavement. You can rest easy knowing that the Instagrammers’ heads, and camera lenses, will all be turned in the other direction.

The example on the market via Strutt & Parker at £1.05 million is a ground-floor apartment (wretched words! but read on) that benefits from its own private entrance.

This is a flat which enjoys remarkable ceiling height, a generous entertaining space, a kitchen and a master bedroom, with built-in wardrobes and a bathroom with both bath and shower. The private, south-facing garden backs onto a larger, communal garden where a certain American film star and English bookseller might once have had a dalliance.

What really makes this apartment stand out, however, are the finishes. This is a soulful and thoughtfully designed flat that’s perfect for a second or third-time buyer moving up in the world. Or, indeed, for anyone downsizing.

For those who need a little more space, an extra £50,000 will see you move up to the other flat on the market at the moment, being sold by Knight Frank and Marsh Parsons. It’s not quite so exotic inside, but has around 20% more floor space and an extra bedroom.

And either way, you’ll have one of the most sought-after addresses in west London, and easy access to the rest of the capital via the stations at Ladbroke Grove (which offers quick access to Paddington and King’s Cross via the Circle Line) and Notting Hill Gate (10 minutes to Bond Street on the Central Line).

The one-bedroom flat on Arundel Gardens is for sale at £1.05 million via Strutt & Parker. The two-bedroom flat is being sold by Knight Frank and Marsh Parsons at £1.1 million.

A version of this feature appears in the January 7, 2026 issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.

Think of the riverbanks of London and you immediately bring to mind the embankments, the gleaming monuments of stone that came as part of the transformational sewage system installed by the Victorian engineers.

Head just a few miles out from the centre of town, and everything changes — and by the time you get to Kew, Chiswick and Richmond, things look very different. Trees and parks feed right down to the water, and stretches of sand appear when the tide begins to go out. It's not quite a rural idyll, with bridges carrying railway lines and dual carriageways criss-crossing the water, but it feels a world away from what lies further east.

Right at the heart of this lies a spot called Strand-on-the-Green. Once a medieval fishing village, it's now a historic conservation area right on the river, sandwiched between Chiswick and Gunnersbury Park, and looking across the water to Kew. A few of the homes here are literally on waterfront, and one of them happens to have come up for sale. It's probably the nearest thing you'll find to a beach house in London; the asking price, via Knight Frank, is £2.5 million.

This four-bedroom home is originally Georgian, but has been extended and updated over the years to get it to its current layout over three floors. On the lower ground floor you'll find two bedrooms plus a huge playroom — over 32ft long — which currently houses a pool table and a fine collection of Lego models.

Above on the ground floor you'll find the front sitting room with that beautiful view of the river, another reception room, and a huge kitchen-diner that stretches deep into the back of the house, leading via french windows into the garden.

On the first floor are two more bedrooms and a good-sized family bathroom, as well as access to the storage in the eaves. While £2.5 million is a lot in the national context, in this postcode you're getting a lot for your money. And on top of that, given that the house came up for auction in December but didn't sell, there's probably scope for discussion over the price.

All this brings us to the caveats. This has been a much-loved home for the current owners, who've been here more than two decades, but as the pictures show there is now work to be done. And no matter how much decorating you'll do, you'll have to be happy living in house that overlooks, and is overlooked by, Kew Railway Bridge.

The final issue is proximity to the river, which is both the house's biggest selling point and biggest question mark: you (and your surveyor) will have to satisfy yourself that when high tides or flooding come to this part of London, the house will stay sound and dry. Don't be too worried — the buildings here seem to shrug off all sorts of conditions — but expert advice is, as always, recommended.

For those who are happy with all that, it's a lovely-looking house in a great position, in a neighbourhood with a wonderful, vibrant community life — plus you'll get to sit on your sofa and spot the seals playing in the Thames.

For sale via Knight Frank with a guide price of £2.5 million — see more details.

East Anglia — an area immortalised in the paintings of John Constable — was last year named by travel guide Lonely Planet as one of the top regions in the world to visit, not only for its beautiful landscapes, but also for its historical treasures (think Sutton Hoo, perhaps) and sometimes wild, but always wonderful coastlines. Buyers looking east and seeking a tranquil haven within easy reach of central London can take their pick from four impressive properties on the market in quiet corners of this area of England.

Barclay Macfarlane of Savills Country Department quotes a guide price of £6.95 million for historic, Grade II*-listed Haslingfield Manor, which sits within a moated island at the heart of Haslingfield village, six miles south-west of Cambridge, 28 miles from Stansted airport and 47 minutes by train from Cambridge to London King’s Cross. Interestingly, no main road passes through the ancient rural village of Haslingfield, which is linked by country lanes to the surrounding villages of Harston, Barton and Barrington.

The interior of today’s Haslingfield Manor is a tour de force by internationally renowned interior designer Ilse Crawford, whose portfolio includes Soho House New York in the US, Babington House Hotel in Somerset and the boutique Ett Hem Hotel in Stockholm, Sweden. The understated elegance that is her trademark is evident throughout.

Haslingfield Manor’s almost 7,420sq ft of timeless living space, with accommodation, laid out across the three main floors.

On the ground floor you'll find the entrance hall, drawing room, library, sitting room, study, reception room, kitchen/breakfast room and wine cellar, play room, laundry room and cloakrooms.

The first floor houses the principal bedroom suite which is one of the most extensive we've seen in a long time, with ‘his-and-her’ dressing rooms, en-suite bath and shower room, and even a private yoga room/snug. There are also two further en-suite bedrooms on this floor, and three additional bedrooms and a family bathroom on the second floor.

The house is approached along a late-17th-century red-brick bridge over the original moat, Haslingfield Manor’s three acres of gardens and grounds have been completely redesigned by Dan Pearson, the recipient of multiple RHS Chelsea Gold Medals and creator of the Delos Garden at Sissinghurst.

The layout includes a formal rose garden, a kitchen garden and greenhouse, a children’s play area hidden in woodland, a wood-fired hot tub for evenings under the stars and gently flowing lawns and artfully planted borders designed for year-round interest. There's even a grass tennis court.

According to the Victoria County History (1973), Henry VIII’s physician, Dr Thomas Wendy, acquired the important Scales estate and manor house at Haslingfield in 1541. This was followed in 1549 by the acquisition of the confiscated lands of the Haslingfield chantries, which established the Wendy family as the parish’s leading landowner.

Wendy died in 1560, leaving Haslingfield to his widow, Margaret, ‘who soon married William Worthington and accordingly received Elizabeth I when she slept at Haslingfield Hall on her way to Cambridge in 1564’. Wendy is thought to have replaced the existing Haslingfield Hall with an H-plan, timber-frame mansion, which was remodelled in the late 17th century by his descendant Sir Thomas Wendy, who raised the roof and added a third storey with additional wings to the north. Much of that house was demolished between 1814 and 1819, and the east end converted to a farmhouse.

In the 19th century, the manor was owned by a succession of Wendy family members before passing to Earl de la Warr in 1803. The estate was sold in 1900 to local jam manufacturer John Chivers, who split up the land and sold several of the farms that same year.

Now, all that remains of the vast H-plan mansion are two three-storey, timber-frame bays of the impressive façade designed by Sir Thomas, which have been imaginatively integrated with a new contemporary interior by the present owners.

Haslingfield Manor is for sale via Savills at £6.95 million — see more details.

The former home of William IV is now available to rent for £25,000 a week via Wetherell estate agents. For £1.3 million a year, you could live in the Grade-II listed Mayfair mansion, which comes complete with a blue plaque.

Built in 1753, the property was remodelled in the 1820s for the king, who lived there when he was Prince William, the Duke of Clarence. He went on to reign for seven years, inheriting the throne aged 64 and ruling until his death. The monarch from 1830-1837, William was the last of the Hanovers and the third son of George III, ‘the mad king’. Like father, like son, William gained his own moniker, ‘the sailor king’, after the time he spent in the Royal Navy.

In his lifetime, William courted scandal by living with, but not marrying, the actress Dorothea Jordan, with whom he had 10 children. He went on to marry Princess Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen — perhaps to reform his image. In 1827, he made history when he was appointed Britain's Lord High Admiral, the first since 1709.

22, Charles Street became his home 70 years after it was built and was used to host Queen Victoria, his niece, who went on to succeed him, when she was just seven years old. The king lived there from 1825-27 before moving on to Clarence House (Charles III’s favoured London home) which was built for him by John Nash.

The six-bedroom property, which is currently available for a two-to-three year tenancy, has retained many of the features added by William including marble fireplaces, ornate coving and ceiling mouldings, and a cast-iron, first floor balcony. It also comes with some modern additions: a gym, wine cellar and passenger lift, a sculpture gallery, multiple dining rooms and an atrium with an incredibly high glass roof. An adjoining mews house is included in the rent.

Totalling 864 square meters in total, Peter Wetherall of Wetherall has called it ‘one of the finest townhouses in Mayfair’.

22, Charles Street is now available to rent for £25,000 a week via Wetherell estate agents.

For the princely sum of £3 million you too can believe in life after love in the building that formerly housed musical icon Cher, Dire Straits front man, Mark Knopfler, and the original Obi-Wan Kenobi actor Sir Alec Guinness — in London’s apparently formerly star-studded high street of… Wapping.

And, no surprises, the two-bedroom flat in Oliver’s Wharf, EW1, comes with a music studio that is fully sound proofed. It also features a balcony with views of the river, large, open-plan living space and ample storage. Canary Wharf — if that's your kind of thing — is easily accessible.

The Grade II-listed Victorian building was once a tea warehouse before it was transformed into luxury residences.

The flat in questions spans approximately 2,300 square feet and has high beams, exposed brickwork, and plenty of natural light. It opens onto a large entrance hall with a guest cloakroom and substantial storage cupboard (storage is a theme throughout and two additional, private storage units are available for £75 each, a year, on top of the service charge).

The accommodation includes a generously proportioned master bedroom, a second bedroom and two bathrooms. Its new owners will likely want to update some of the more choice decor, but the space offers exceptional versatility with potential for reconfiguration (subject to planning), allowing future owners to tailor the layout to their needs.

Further benefits include secure parking, lift access, a building manager and the rich heritage of one of Wapping’s most iconic warehouse conversions.

Oliver's Wharf is for sale with Knight Frank — see more details.

Most of our musical instruments have many centuries of history, handed down by countless generations. The violin and its variants have been with mankind for half a millennium. The guitar dates to medieval Spain. There are trumpets in the bible, and drums are almost as ancient as humankind: examples from 5500 BC have been discovered by archaeologists.

The piano, however, is a little different. While the ancient Greeks had pipe organs and Henry VIII probably composed Greensleeves on a harpsichord, their heir, the piano is a very different instrument to either of those, both in mechanism and sound. The first pianos date to the turn of the 18th century, and the upright piano didn't come into being until the 1780s.

When it came, though, it was a sensation. It's no exaggeration to say that pianos changed music, with its dynamic range, versatility and ability to shine either as part of an orchestra or on its own. Is it a coincidence that Bach, Beethoven and Mozart all emerged after the piano's invention? Probably not, and all three composed on the then relatively new creation. Its rise coincided with the Industrial Revolution, and by the middle of the 19th century, pianos were being made by the tens of thousands each year.

In Britain, London was the epicentre of this wave of production, with all but a handful of the nation's piano makers being based in the capital. All things pass, however, and the rise of pre-recorded music in the 20th century meant that the poor piano was yesterday's instrument, and many of them were considered junk — even to the point that the appalling new 'sport' of piano smashing briefly emerged in post-war Britain.

Almost two centuries on from the peak years of piano making, several of these London factories in now-sought-after locations such as Primrose Hill and Camden have found other uses. A few years ago one of the old Chappell & Co buildings on Belmont Street completed its journey from pianos in the 19th century to photography in the 20th century — David Bailey's studio was here — to loft apartments in the 21st century. Now, another of Chappell & Co's old factory buildings right around the corner has been turned in to swish homes: the old piano factory on Ferdinand Street in Chalk Farm, right between Camden Town and Hampstead, is now Piano Studios.

The developers, it must be said, have done a beautiful job on the place. The 19 flats — which are being sold via Knight Frank and Aston Chase between £650k and £1.95 million — have all sorts of original architectural features retained, from exposed wooden beams and brickwork to the high ceilings and sash windows you'd expect of Victorian architecture.

That said, this is very definitely a 21st century home: the lighting is — and this is not a word we use much at Country Life — pretty damn cool, with some installed at skirting board level, some hidden in at the edges of the ceilings, and shining from pendant lights that dangle above kitchen islands and so on.

The kitchens — at least of the five show flats we've seen — are a bingo card of features, from instant boiling water taps to polished metal countertops that sit alongside marble features and bespoke joinery, all within rooms warmed from below by under-floor heating. Most of the apartments also have access to either a balcony or roof terrace.

All this comes at a price: the smallest apartments, of under 600sq ft, are being sold at £650,000, and while we've not had confirmation of the service charge, we'd expect it to be enough that you'll have to double-check your sums before applying for a mortgage. But you can see the appeal of place that has more history to it than most anonymous north London blocks, and which — as Knight Frank's Raul Cimesa puts it, 'captures the essence of modern loft living whilst preserving the industrial heritage of the historic piano factory'.

Piano Studios are for sale via Knight Frank and Aston Chase — see more details.

A budget of £150,000 doesn’t get you far in the property world of London. We did find this £110,000 houseboat in Chelsea, for example, but you’d likely have to pay in cash, as well as finding nearly £1,000 a month in mooring charges. There’s also a garage in Clapham on the market at £150,000, and it has a very nice blue door… but it’s still just a garage.

So to come across a well-located property of over 1,000 sq ft, right near the River Thames, with freehold included, up for auction with a guide price of £110,000 feels like something of a miracle. The catch? It’s a former public convenience on the Isle of Dogs, and the entire place needs to be gutted.

If you’re looking for something a little more elegant, then down in leafy West Norwood has another example, also up for auction via Savills. It’s smaller — at just 657 sq ft — but is a classic, Victorian underground-loo, with the soft, natural lighting afforded by the glass bricks built into the pavement above.

So, would you have to be a loo-ny to consider buying such a place? Well, it’d take someone with a strong stomach (and perhaps a weak sense of smell) to try and convert a convenience in to a home, but several such properties across the capital have been turned into cafés and bars before now, and — subject to planning permission — there are all sorts of things that could be done.

Places such as the WC Bars (the letters officially stand for ‘wine and charcuterie’, even though they obviously don’t) have been opened in Bloomsbury and Clapham in recent years, while the Attendant café chain has a branch in a subterranean facility in Fitzrovia.

Everyone loves a speakeasy with an unusual entrance, and stepping down beneath pavement level to find a cosy eatery tucked away is the sort of quirky, fun experience that you’d imagine goes down a storm with young professionals about town.

If turning one of these places into a place to eat and drink doesn’t appeal, you could always make it a novelty boutique hotel, like The Netty in the centre of Oxford. They've done such a magnificent job that they've been featured across the world — not least in the New York Times Style Magazine.

Of course, these toilets could (subject to permission) even be made into permanent homes, either to live in yourself, or to rent out — and the latter option will even give you the chance to use the phrase ‘toilet to let’ in the advert.

If you’re keen to roll forward with your plan, you’ll have to be quick: the Manchester Road public toilets in E14 and the Robson Road conveniences in West Norwood are both part of the Savills property auction being held next week on 21 and 22 October. As ever with buying a property at auction, you’ll need to make sure you know exactly what you’re doing — financially and legally — before jumping in. Good luck.

See more details about Manchester Road and Robson Road conveniences, both for auction via Savills.

In 1899, London was enraptured by a bold new artist who'd thrown off centuries of convention: Isadora Duncan. At the age of 21 she'd left her native San Francisco and moved to London to pursue life as a dancer, where she threw off the confines of traditional ballet and created an astonishing new style of movement and performance, dazzling the public. 'It was not long before the phenomenon of a young woman dancing barefoot, as scantily clad as a woodland nymph, crowded theatres and concert halls throughout Europe,' reads her entry in Encyclopaedia Britannica.

Duncan's performances weren't limited to just the stage, however: she'd made her home in a recently-built Kensington development — Pembroke Studios, where one of the apartments is now for sale — and it sounds as if it was a raucous, chaotic time. The dancer had sub-let the apartment from the painter John Young-Hunter, who later told the tale of a tenant who, 'along with her friends was hilariously noisy both inside and out the studio.' The parties caused a ruckus, and prompted several complaints, not least thanks to 'a rented piano adding an accompaniment to the din throughout the night.'

Pembroke Studios — as the name implies — weren't just any west London homes, but rather a purpose-built, mews-style block of 12 apartments arranged around communal gardens in a mini gated community. Every aspect of the design was geared towards helping artists develop their craft: the apartments all had double-height ceilings, and cavernous studio rooms where huge windows let the light pour in. All those rooms faced north; it's the best light for artists, much softer and less changeable than the harsher direct sunlight of a south-facing room.

The Studios — built in 1890–91 by developer Charles Frederick Kearley — weren't unique in London, but they are almost unique in having survived the ensuing 130 years in near-original condition. A couple were damaged by bombs during the war, and a mezzanine floor has been retro-fitted in another, but nine of the 12 give a true flavour of the original purpose of their creation (this example included) and they are Grade II-listed in recognition of their rare place in the architectural make-up of the capital.

Isadora Duncan didn't actually stay long at Number Three — no doubt to the great relief of her neighbours — but over the years dozens of hugely successful artists have been based here. David Hockney is perhaps top of that list: he lived at Number Five, and the Historic England listing details how this space was utilised in some of his work: 'Hockney’s studio interiors feature in a number of his lithographic and photographic works, and much of his research on the use of optical devices in historic realist painting was undertaken at Pembroke Studios; many of his experiments with camera obscura and camera lucida were undertaken in studio 5.'

This isn't to say that time has stood still at Pembroke Studios, nor at this apartment in particular. It was for a quarter of a century the home of the architect Charles Smallwood — whose firm thrives to this day — and constantly improved and upgraded this apartment while staying true to its spirit and origins: The result is 'a masterclass in understated sophistication', in the words of the agents, Blue Book. 'Smallwood, renowned for drawing inspiration from timeless traditions, treated the house as both canvas and home,' they add.. 'His vision created a place that is as practical as it is beautiful, blending natural materials, global influences and fine craftsmanship.'

Blue Book's listing has far more details about (and pictures of) the apartment, Pembroke Studios in general, and the many artists who've lived here in the last 130 years. The only sadness is that, at £4.35 million for a 1,574sq ft home, it's more likely that your neighbours will be city brokers and tech whizz-kids than up-and-coming artists or trailblazing dancers.

The apartment in Pembroke Studios is for sale at £4.35 million via Blue Book — see more pictures and details.

The word 'Penywern' is a curious one. It's not an uncommon place name in Wales, given to various roads, and a village centred on a 19th century iron works near Merthyr Tydfil. Its meaning, so a random Google search tells me, is 'head of the alder-bog'. In other words, it's a pretty and delicate word that couldn't have a less romantic meaning if it tried.

But while its Welsh origins may be prosaic, Penywern Road in West London is anything but. This is the very heart of Earls Court, practiaclly backing on to the Tube station, at the epicentre of one of London's busiest places — a major junction of road, rail and Underground, where charming 18th century terraces weave between hotels and conference centres, and where traditional pubs with booze-stained carpets sit alongside sophisticated restaurants with elegant decor and well-heeled clientele.

So what a wonderful surprise it is to find at the centre of all this a charming home that is beautiful and elegant, graceful and grand, with a garden that's miniature green oasis accessed from french windows that lead out of the sort of vast drawing room you'd see in an episode of Bridgerton. This apartment is on the market via Savills at £2.395 million.

That buys you a two-bedroom home of just over 1,500 sq ft, a place where every design decision has clearly been made after serious thought and attention.

This impression was only confirmed when Savills explained who the current owners are: Tim Martin, an architect and artist who has worked all over the globe, including a stint as senior designer at the American Museum of Natural History in New York; and Michael Wilkinson, a costume designer for film and TV with a huge list of credits to his name. Wilkinson's most recent work was designing the costumes for the Star Wars TV spin-off Andor, a critical and commercial hit that recently earned the designer an Emmy for Outstanding Fantasy/Sci-Fi Costumes.

Entering the flat at street level, the single, large reception room is straight ahead of you, leading through those doors on to a balcony that makes the most of the garden — though it's worth noting that it faces east, probably making it better for morning coffee than long summer evenings.

Downstairs, there's a master bedroom with en-suite and a second bedroom accessed via the kitchen-dining room, which — according to the floorplan — shares a dressing room/walk-in wardrobe with the master suit.

The L-shaped kitchen/dining room is cleverly laid out to make the most of the space, and three sets of doors open out into the garden that is described as 'an oasis of calm and privacy seldom found in Zone 1 London', by agent Douglas McCraith. Frankly — and we don't often say this — we think Douglas is underplaying it a bit. At this price point, in this postcode, I don't ever remember seeing more, or better, green space on offer.

'It's one of the most unique and exceptional properties I have seen for a long time!' adds the agent. 'I love the beautiful garden and the wonderful entertaining space.' Us too, Douglas. Us too.

No doubt Martin and Wilkinson will be sorry to leave, but travelling for work means they haven't been at the place much. The time they have spent here has clearly seen the greenery seep in to their veins: they're planning to head further out to Hampstead. Gardening really does get us all in the end.

The flat in Penywern Road is for sale via Savills at £2.395m — see more pictures and details.

By the start of the 1980s, the Monty Python comedy troupe — John Cleese, Michael Palin, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, Graham Chapman and Terry Gilliam — were perhaps the most famous comedians in the world. They'd graduated from their iconic, surreal TV show of the 1970s to producing a string of hugely successful films, including Monty Python's Life of Brian and Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

That much you probably knew. What you probably didn't know is that around that same time, they had a purpose-built studio erected in Camden, on Delancey Street, half-way between Camden Lock and Regent's Park. They called it Milkwood Studios, in honour of Dylan Thomas who had briefly (and rather unhappily) lived in a basement flat down the road at number 54 (a blue plaque celebrates the poet's stay).

The studio served as Python HQ for 20-odd years, and was also home to George Harrison's HandMade Films, which produced and distributed the Pythons' movies.

For the past dozen years, however, it's been a rather wonderful house — one which you can call home as it's appeared on the rental market via Domus Nova.

Commercial properties converted into homes don't usually manage to feel cosy, and that's absolutely the case at Milkwood Studios. Delancey Street is absolutely slap bang in the centre of the NW1 postcode, and this is a city pad that's achingly-cool and stylish, in contrast to the charming Georgian houses you'd find elsewhere in the environs of Regent's Park.

It's also huge: there's almost 10,000sq ft on offer, which is a vast amount of floor space for a four-bedroom, four-bathroom house. Nearly half of that is taken up by the vast central area that is a hugely impressive living area, which was designed by architects Powell Tuck Associates and interior designer Marianne Tiegen. It's big enough to swallow a huge library, an 18-seater table, wide open seating areas and a kitchen-dining zone which has what's described by the agents as 'restaurant quality' appliances and fittings.

Exposed girders and polished concrete floors give an industrial feel, but plentiful indoor plants bring the organic beauty too, and we'd guess they thrive here thanks to huge skylights and a Crittal-style glass wall down one side.

The greenery continues outside, where planting both at ground level and on the roof terrace help make the house a sort of mini-oasis.

The bedrooms and bathrooms are arranged away from the main space and over three levels, and they're just as striking as you'd expect.

The overall combination of style and quality mixed with light and quirky charm is really quite something, and as you'd expect this is close to the top of the rental market in London. Milkwood is being offered at £65,000 per month on a long-let, or £108,333 per month for those looking for a short-term let. It's a lot, but most of the big-name hotels in London have suites costing an equivalent £3,000-a-night and up these days... and we know where we'd rather stay.

Milkwood Studios are available to rent via Domus Nova — see more details.

Before I moved to the UK in 2002, my mother and I went shopping for a house. Well, she went shopping; I went with her, because I was nine-years-old and didn’t have any money. Despite not buying it, I do remember looking around a mews property and being fascinated by a spiral cast-iron staircase, the street cobbles, and the large garage doors.

It’s odd what memories stick with you after such a long time. But I suppose it speaks to the enduring charm of the mews that this memory did. I would still like to own one one day, should the financial situation arrive, and have been known to spend hours looking at those for sale on various websites across the internet. Such is the joy of the casual property journalist.

If a fleeting memory is evidence of the mews’s timeless appeal, then so too perhaps is the existence of Lurot Brand, a London agency that specialises in mews houses and was established in 1971. If you, like me, feel like wasting an hour looking at mews houses, it’s a good place to start.

‘They’ve got a bit of history, they’re in lovely locations and they are quintessentially British,’ says sales associate Mike Lurot. ‘You’ve got the history, they’re typically freehold and lots of them have roof terraces, which is another quirky appeal.’

The history that Mike mentions is key to the appeal of the mews. The word traces its lineage to the French ‘muer’, which means ‘to moult’. They were originally used to confine moulting hawks, and the term is still used in falconry circles (how can I join these circles) to refer to housing these birds of prey.

Falconry circles used to include royalty, and it was on the site of the Royal Hawk Mews at Charing Cross that the Royal Stables were first built, transitioning the term from avian to equine. The modern mews we see across London take their name from these royal stables (which moved to the Buckingham Palace Road 200 years ago), and various others built from the 18th century, which also helps explain why so many can be found near Hyde Park.

‘The cobbles that we now think of as charming served a practical function as hard-wearing surfaces for horses,’ says Giles Barrett, director at Domus Nova (another great website to browse for beautiful homes, mews or otherwise). ‘Likewise, what used to stable a horse or two, in many cases, now stable 450 “horses”…in the form of a gleaming, powerful horsepower.’ Not only charming, but practical, as Giles attests. Where else are you going to get your own private garage within a five-minute walk from Hyde Park?

As much as the location is key, so too is the sense of community you get from those cobbled streets. ‘I know all my neighbours,’ says Robin Gedye, who lives in a mews house near High Street Kensington. ‘My children used to play football up and down the street, which felt very 1920s, but mews are pretty much the only place you can do that these days. Everyone here looks after each other.’

‘They are so private,’ says Mike. ‘You can put some tables and chairs out front, flowerpots, and so on. A lot of mews have an annual summer party as well.’

Further strings to the bow of the mews would be their variety and adaptability. ‘Prices can start around £1-1.5 million, but in Knightsbridge, exquisitely designed examples can fetch up to £20 million,’ notes Giles. ‘I sold one on Bathurst Mews in 2023, which was home to the last working mews in London, Hyde Park Stables. You could still smell the horses. It had all the original character, was bought through a buying agent, and attracted strong interest with multiple offers.

‘A well-run, well-located mews always generates attention. And although they don’t always offer meaningful outside space, many buyers are looking for something low maintenance they can simply bolt up and leave.’ That lock-up-and-leave-ability makes them popular with international buyers, as does their proximity to Paddington Station and Heathrow.

When I ask Mike his favourite of London’s more than 8,000 mews, he struggles to decide. ‘Hyde Park Gardens Mews is so close to the park and you’ve got horses trotting through it every day,’ he says. ‘But Kynance Mews in Kensington is probably the prettiest one.’

Most mews have all been refurbished, renovated and re-fitted to achingly high standards, but that sense of old world charm never really goes away. ‘The mews had a working stables when I moved here 25 years ago,’ Robin says. ‘I woke up to the sound of horse hooves on cobbles, which was very reminiscent of Charles Dickens, so that was lovely. There were six horses on our street and a drunken lady who looked after them. Naturally, they’d escape down Gloucester Road and she chased after them on her bicycle. Sadly, they've gone now.’

The horses and carriages may have gone, but that desirability hasn’t faded, and it doesn’t seem it ever will. ‘I believe, amid the noise and haste of London, the once-humble mews house is among the most desirable property-picks on the market, for they are off the beaten track,’ concludes Giles.

‘And because they were typically add-ons, often accessed by underground passages, to the very grandest of houses, they are also often found in the finest parts of London. So it’s no surprise they’re still popular with high-profile buyers who value discretion.’

According to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), ‘observing’ is an act of seeing or noticing something, often with a degree of care or attention. Sadly, it’s often tricky to see or notice much in London because we move too fast, desperate to get from A to B in the shortest possible time; frustrated at slow pedestrians; heads down, glued to our phones, ignorant of the architectural spectacle that surrounds us.

It is why, when it comes to London property, I’ve always prized roof terraces and balconies over standard gardens. You need a view, a vantage point from which to truly appreciate everything that the capital has to offer.

The Observatory, steps from Fulham Palace Gardens, ticks all the boxes with its 360-degree views, courtesy of an expansive roof terrace. The three-bedroom penthouse, located inside a former paint factory, unfolds across 2,700 sq ft. The sense of scale is most palpable in the open-plan kitchen, dining and living rooms that occupy much of the lower level, topped by a soaring ceiling that’s criss-crossed by exposed timber trusses and steel beams.

There are three double bedrooms, all with inbuilt storage (another luxury I can’t live without) and newly-installed Sisal carpets. The two largest rooms come with air-conditioning, which is likely going to become as important as natural light, storage and space in the eyes of London’s buyers in the years to come.

A slim steel and white staircase ascends from the dining room to The Observatory’s namesake feature — a second living room housed inside the extended apex of the glazed roof. Sliding doors at either end of the maple-floored room open out onto the aforementioned roof terrace, which features new decking and an irrigation system. Who said you had to be on the ground floor to have a bountiful garden?

Back inside, there are other features of note, including the double-glazed Crittal windows and downstairs garage. Oh, and don’t forget the Britannia range cooker.

The Observatory is for sale with The Modern House for £2,750,000 — click here for more information and pictures

The enduring fascination with Anne Boleyn is remarkable. It's 493 years since Henry married his most enigmatic bride — the woman for whom he and Thomas Cromwell engineered the Reformation in England — but I'd happily bet that most people know more (and care more) about Boleyn than almost any queen of the past millennium. The only exceptions — putting aside recent history — are Queen Victoria and Queen Elizabeth I, and given that the latter was Boleyn's daughter, she's intricately bound up in that slice of history too.

People have written volume after volume dissecting why, but at the core is Henry's single-minded callousness in swapping Catherine of Aragon for a younger, more fertile wife in Anne, and moving heaven and earth to do so — almost literally, considering the lasting change to religion in Britain. It's more than that, though: we tend to picture most of Henry's wives as pawns in the great chess game that was Western Europe in the 1530s, but Anne has a reputation as a serious player, bright and clever, using her wiles and proving a match for her husband, only to eventually be undone by machinations beyond her control. How much of this is true, and how much a remnant of Elizabethan propaganda, lionising Elizabeth I's mother, is something else that has filled many volumes.

Let's not academic debate get in the way of the story today, though, for coming up to auction is a home in the very centre of Windsor where Anne Boleyn and the still relatively young Henry VIII are said to have met in secret to begin the affair that would eventually culminate in marriage. Flat 6, Queen Anne's Court is being auctioned off on August 6, with a guide price of £295,000.

For that, you get a three-bedroom maisonette within a building which the auctioneers note is Grade II-listed, though it seems to be so as part of a general listing for some of the buildings on Peascod Street rather than individually. That does beg the question of the exact truth of the claim, though it's far from the first time that it's been made by agents selling property in this spot.

As ever with Anne and Henry, history, legend and myth seem to go hand-in-hand. And really, would we have it any other way?

Flat 6, Queen Anne's Court, Windsor, is lot 42A in an auction being held across August 6 and 7, 2025. See more details here, and — as ever with auction properties — prospective buyers should be very careful about doing their due diligence before entering a bid

A built-in desire to move to the countryside is a very British thing. We make our fortune in the big, smokey city and then move out to pleasant pastures green — in search of a suitably old and large home — at odds with multiple other countries and cultures that have problems trying to convince its people to leave overcrowded cities. And this desire for rural living, to live out our Lord of the Manor fantasies — a title that dates back to feudal Anglo-Saxon England — is not solely baked into the DNA of Brits who grew up in the countryside. It’s baked into all of us, regardless of where or how we were raised.

No one is immune, not even Britain’s most famous supermodel, Kate Moss, who grew up in Croydon, South London, and sold this St John’s Wood home in North-West London in 2012, for £.6.8 million — to relocate to the Cotswolds. The Victorian stucco front property, which she lived in for a decade, is now back on the market with Arlington Residential, for £5,950,000.

There are six bedrooms and four bathrooms, spread across approximately 440 sq m of space. Everything is well proportioned and there’s plenty of natural light — including in the basement, eat-in kitchen which opens out onto a wide terrace, dug out of the garden — but it lacks much character. The upside of this is that the interiors are a blank canvas, ripe for redecoration.

Other bits of note include the garage, study, multiple dressing rooms (a model has quite a lot of clothes, after all), gym-cum-bedroom and attic storage space.

Outside, it’s all very pretty, thanks to a mixture of large sash windows and French doors, swirling, wrought iron railings, and an elegant, low pitched roof. Arlington’s director also wisely points out that the house is sheltered nicely by mature trees and is all but invisible from the road. The garden faces south-west.

However, our favourite part? The Kate Moss book, casually on display on the airy drawing room’s coffee table (above).

Despite our seemingly biological longing for the countryside, some of us still need to be in London for work, or in order to be closer to family and better infrastructure. And you could do worse than St John’s Wood which started life as, unsurprisingly, a wood belonging to the Knights of St John.

It was still rural and secluded in the Elizabethan era when, according to Alexander Wood’s Ecclesiastical Antiquities of London and its Suburbs, five Babington Plot conspirators, including Anthony Babington, fled here to avoid arrest (they were eventually captured on their way to Harrow and sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered). By then, St John’s Wood was Crown property, but Oliver Cromwell sold it in 1649 and, after a succession of owners, it came into the hands of the Eyre family, who would develop it into London’s first garden suburb in the early 19th century.

Nowadays, it’s beloved by residents for its village atmosphere and many great pubs, restaurants, shops and cafes. Plus, everything from Regent’s Park to the London Zoo and West End is in easy reach.

The house on Greville Road, St John's Wood, is for sale via Arlington Residential at £5,950,000 — see more pictures and details

The architect Terry Farrell has left his mark on Britain like few other architects. Born in Newcastle, he is probably most famous for the MI6 Building in Vauxhall, aka the SIS Building, a landmark in green and beige Lego, but he his also the man who redeveloped Charing Cross Station and several chunks of Covent Garden.

What Farrell — Sir Terence Farrell, to give him his full title — almost never did was design homes. When he did, they were invariably pretty special. Take 125, Park Road, aka the Park Road Apartments: it’s a metallic, high-rise block overlooking Regent’s Park that has been described as ‘the building clad in aluminium dustbin lids’, and is now listed by Historic England. Then there’s the apartment he designed, and lived in himself, within a former Spitfire factory, with model planes hanging from the ceilings. Most of his career has been spent on larger scale urban developments across the world.

So it was a bit of a departure when, in 2003, Farrell — now 87 years old — designed a trio of houses down by the River Thames in Petersham. Located just upstream from Richmond, this is a dreamy part of London that’s all meadows and woodland, bounded by the curve of the river on one side and Richmond Park on the other, it's dotted with landmarks such as London's last remaining polo club, the Jacobean icon that is Ham House, and the very 21^st century icon that is Petersham Nurseries.

One of those three properties, Drum House, is now on the market via Luxury Portfolio for £9 million, and it’s every bit as modern, challenging and playful as you’d expect from the architect who once put giant painted egg cups on the roof of the building he made for breakfast television company TV-AM.

Arranged on a T-shaped plan, the main house has almost 6,200sq ft of space, plus a separate, self-contained summer house, plant room and store room. Glass walls look out onto the lawn so geometrically precise that you can see why the gardeners have been asked to shape several of the trees into cubes — though the spectacular magnolias add natural spiral twists to the order.

It's a house of huge open space, with a kitchen-breakfast room (including Officine Gullo cooker) that’s nearly 50ft long, and the drawing room forming the T shape, protruding from the house and dissecting the garden into two separate areas.

The outside space is important here. The gardens were designed by John Sallis Chandler, who has won multiple RHS Chelsea Flower Show gold medals, and all five bedrooms (three of which have en-suite bathrooms) look out over it in the same direction. It’s not just pretty to look at: there is a herb garden and vegetable patch as well as lawns, trees, and an irresistible swing seat.

As you’d expect at this end of the market, there is a media room, gym area, wine room and more, as well as a generous parking area.

And then there’s that location, amid great schools, beautiful countryside, and all within easy reach of central London.

Drum House is for sale at £9 million — see more pictures and details.

When you think about living in a warehouse or loft in one of East London's trendier areas, what springs to mind? You'd quite probably expect to come across exposed steel girders supporting mezzanine floors, avant-garde art on the walls and achingly hip furniture that looks as amazing as it feels uncomfortable. What you don't expect — and what I didn't expect, ahead of looking at the property on this page — is to find a home that is equal parts city and country, which blends elements of Edwardian drawing rooms and Cotswolds kitchens along with Clerkenwell cool.

Yet that is the recipe that comes together at this house in Garrett Street, which is now being marketed by Savills at £6 million.

This storied home that once served as the recording studio for the Pet Shop Boys, and was also the home of the film-maker Sam Taylor-Johnson and her husband Aaron Taylor-Johnson, the actor who is currently 5/2 bookies favourite to be the next James Bond.

They've since moved on, which will be a real shame should he get the Bond gig. How easy it would have been be to add a couple of extra zeroes in front of the house number...

The people responsible for this gorgeous city/country blend aren't the Taylor-Johnsons (and still less the Pet Shop Boys), but the film director Joe Wright, his partner Anoushka Shanka, and their architect Charles Tashima, who refurbished what was once the stables and sawmill for the Whitbread Brewery to make it what it is today.

And what a job they did. There are Chesterfield sofas and exposed wooden beams, exposed brickwork and stained glass window panes. There are bookshelves and cabinets in seemingly every corner; a huge gas range in the kitchen which could have come straight from a cottage in West Sussex rather than a warehouse in East London.

For a house of almost 4,500sq ft, there are few rooms — just seven — but when one of those is a showstopper of a first floor, open-plan living space that's almost 60ft long (or 18m in new money) and 24ft across, that's more understandable.

There are two bedrooms above on the second floor, both en-suite, while one of the ground floor rooms currently used as an art and craft space could easily become a bedroom as well, should you need more space.

There are wonderful pictures here from the agent, as you can see here, but we'd highly recommend a look at the project page on Mr Tashima's website, which shows before, during and and after pictures of the work being done. It's a fascinating insight into just how much effort goes into creating a relaxed, carefree look and feel to your home.

7 Garrett Street, London, is for sale via Savills — see more pictures and information.

When a property is offered with riverside views in London, the mind immediately wanders towards large, glass-covered buildings that are sprouting from Southwark to Wandsworth. It is not surprising, because there are a lot of them. I have been in some and the views are spectacular. What they lack, through no fault other than their newness, is character and soul.

Back in the late 19th century, before people had heard of large glass towers, if people wanted views of the Thames, they would build pretty brick houses in Putney and cover them in wisteria, like this one on Deodar Road, which is for sale with Savills for £9.95 million. Did it have character and soul back then? Who knows, that’s not my department, but it has those things now.

What gives a home character and soul? Its looks? It’s hard to argue that 81 Deodar Road is anything other than very very pretty. From the road, those magnolia trees framing a mustard yellow façade and white-framed windows is about as perfect an entrance I can think of. From the rear, red brick with wisteria climbers makes a healthy scene of riverside relaxation. All the boxes are ticked there.

Perhaps character comes from ownership. The eagle-eyed among you will have spotted a blue plaque on the front of Deodar Road. That would belong to Sir Sidney Nolan, who lived here in the 1960s with his wife Cynthia. It was here, in a top-floor studio, that he created some of his most famous works and he received visits from friends such as Patrick White, Kenneth MacMillan and Benjamin Britten. Indeed, a camellia planted for Cynthia by Britten still flowers here today.

So when it comes to character and soul, it’s pretty hard to beat. As for location, this part of Putney, directly opposite the Hurlingham Club and with easy access to Putney High Street and Wandsworth Park, is among London’s most desirable.

And what’s inside? These days, Deodar Road is split up into three separate apartments, totalling eight bedrooms in all. As a result, any potential buyer could transform the property into a riverside mansion, or just keep the ground-floor flat (with exclusive use of the garden) as a London getaway.

The interiors exude as much character as the bricks, mortar, and history of the home, and many of the rooms, regardless of which floor you are on, offer river views. It’s probably used a bit too much for my tastes, but this really is a very rare opportunity to own one of London’s great riverside homes.

This property on Deodar Road is for sale with Savills for £9.95 million. For more information and pictures, click here.

There is an affliction with new-build apartments in that many of them are decorated like they are hotels. I understand why. Many are simply used as boltholes, for short stays by visiting owners who often don’t have the time to think about furniture or decorating. Regardless, they can be boring and, for some reason I do not understand, very grey.

Therefore it is only fair to shine a light when people make an effort. In Mayfair, the new development at 60 Curzon seems determined to move on from glass and grey, and create something of architectural merit and interest.

There is history here to be respected. 60 Curzon stands on the historic site of Mirabelle, the iconic eatery that hosted guests from Leo DiCaprio to Elizabeth Taylor, while the interior architecture of the building was created by Thierry Despont, who designed the Carlyle in New York and restored the Statue of Liberty. Grey furniture simply won’t do.

Of particular interest is this duplex designed by De Rosee Sa. Set over two-floors, the Lisbon and London based studio have dressed this three-bedroom property with character, ambience and charm. I love the bronze console table, and the antiqued mirror. The clever partitions that echo some of Frank Lloyd-Wright’s best work. Dusty pinks and cool blues and lots of wood. And the pièce-de-résistance, the Sputnik chandelier.

‘The design strikes a balance between contemporary and classic, with interiors that feel as though they’ve been lovingly curated over time,’ says Claire Sá, co-founder De Rosee Sa.

‘Playful tones like cerulean blue, dusty pink, and deep red bring warmth and energy, softening the marble finishes. Furniture and art were chosen with intention — including pieces from our own collection — to add narrative, depth, and a sense of evolution. The result is a home that feels lived-in, loved, and ready to grow with its future owner.’

This is the third ‘residence’ in 60 Curzon’s series of designer led homes. I am excited to see what they serve up next.

This three-bedroom apartment is for sale for £18.5 million. For more information, click here.

There are few parts of south London that are as pleasant to spend a sunny afternoon as West Square in Kennington. Rows upon rows of Grade II-listed Georgian homes, each bubbling with character, surrounding one of London’s most exclusive green spaces. How the other half live.

So desirable is it, in fact, that it is extremely rare for properties on the square to come up for sale. Even rarer still for a property as well appointed as this one, the location of which is only exceeded by the excellence of its interiors. For sale with Knight Frank for £2.5 million.

Do you like colours? I like colours. I do not, however, like colours as much as the owner of this home, who has created a symphony of light and pastel in this three bedroom home. They might perhaps be some of the most exciting and interesting interiors I have ever seen in a home for sale.

Clearly I am not alone in believing this, for the property has featured in a plethora of coffee table books, English, French and Italian interiors magazines and a number of films and tv shows, including The Crown. Looking at the pictures, it’s not hard to see why.

As much as we can lust over the beauty and provenance of the furniture and the paintings, sadly we must focus on the home itself. Set over five floors, it offers a large kitchen, dining room, conservatory and garden on the lower ground floor, while a double reception room, lounge and home office make up the ground and first floors. Three bedrooms can be found on the remaining two floors.

The garden is of a typical size for a London property so central, but has clearly been crafted with the same keen eye for detail that can be found indoors, with regimented raised beds and areas for entertaining. The devil is in the details, and no detail has been overlooked here.

The location, as discussed, is magnificent. Should you ever decide to leave the peaceful idyll of West Square, the many amenities of Kennington, Elephant and Castle and South London are well within easy reach, as are Kennington and Oval tube stations.

This three-bedroom home on West Square, SE11, is for sale with Knight Frank for £2.5 million. For more information and pictures, click here.

We have had churches, we have had water towers, we have had windmills, banks and warehouses. What we have not had, until now, is Cold War testing sites that are now family homes.

There is a first-time for everything and it is somewhat exciting to be able to (hopefully) entertain you, the reader, about Rotunda in Bushy Park, London. It is for sale with Savills for £7.5 million and is, as the name suggests, quite round.

In fact, you are probably looking at Rotunda and thinking that it looks a bit like the BBC Television Centre in west London. You would be right to think that because it was converted by the same architects, Norman & Dawbarn. Famous for their brutalist modern architecture, they have done some of their best work turning Rotunda into a six-bedroom, six-bathroom, family home.

r best work turning Rotunda into a six-bedroom, six-bathroom, family home.

So what were the navy (for it was the navy) testing at Rotunda before it became a house? The answer appears to be torpedoes, of which the Royal Navy has some of the best, so clearly there was some decent work going on there.

Much of that history was demolished when the house was converted, but remnants remain, such as the two subterranean levels of the home, which so far remain undeveloped but provide ample opportunity for use as a swimming pool, gym complex, basketball court, and so on.

The rest of the home has been developed, as discussed, and is set over two floors. The ground floor is mostly an open entertaining space, comprising a vast kitchen/breakfast/dining/living room area which stretches to most of the length of the building. There is a separate study, playroom and conservatory. The interiors feature a host of modernist touches, from floating beds to sunken baths and beyond.

Upstairs, you will find six bedrooms and six bathrooms, including the master suite, which also features a small terrace with views over the 1.3 acres of gardens. In total, the property offers more than 10,000sq ft of living space.

And where is that living space? In the middle of Bushy Park, one of south-west London’s finest green spaces. Just a few hundred yards separate the property and the ‘villages’ of Hampton Hill and Teddington, which provide ample amenities.

No doubt in its former life, the activities occurring at the Rotunda were top secret. Well the secret is now out.

Rotunda is for sale with Savills for £7.5 million. For more information and pictures, click here.

The issue with a lot of houses in London is that they can look a little boring. It is not the houses’ fault, of course. London is a big city and a lot of people need to live here. Things generally have to be quite uniform so that they can fit. There is beauty in repetition, of course, but not necessarily in individuality.

However, sometimes things get through. It should perhaps be no surprise that Vale End, the former home of the artist Arthur Croft Mitchell, should stand out on Mallord Street in Chelsea, SW3. On first glance, it seems fairly traditional and of its place. And yet it somehow stands out. It’s currently up for sale with Savills and Farrar for £9 million.

Originally built in 1914 for Croft Mitchell, the property has remained in the family until the current day. Its bespoke design remains to this day, notably the two studio spaces on the first and second floors. The property offers three bedrooms and a large garden.

Much care has been taken in the original design of Vale End. The blue walls of the first floor studio, were chosen specially to control the 'temperature' of the light within the room. The green window frames were requested by his wife, Molly, to complement the foliage.

Now it would be remiss to not point out that Vale End requires a little bit of work, but an opportunity remains an opportunity until it is acted upon. Looking at the images of the studio spaces, the mind runs with possibilities as to how to use it.

Mallord Street, so named after Joseph Mallord William Turner, has been an artist’s enclave for generations. Augustus John was a neighbour. Cecil Arthur Hunt, Graham Petrie, A. A. Milne, and John Francis Kavanagh have all lived here.

It is astoundingly rare to find a home such as this, in a place such as this, that is effectively a blank canvas. What an opportunity.

Vale End is for sale with Savills and Farrar for £9 million

The headline news is that London is the 31st happiest city in the world, which sounds about right. The nation’s capital, the beating heart of the UK’s culture, economy and population, is happy enough, but not too happy. About a 'Zoom meeting at work got cancelled at the last minute’ level of happy. We got 842 points, which sounds like a lot, but is fewer than 30 other cities. It is also more than 170 other cities. Good, but not great. B+.

The ranking comes from the suspiciously named Institute for Quality of Life, which releases its Happy City Index (HCI) each year. London has at least had the decency to improve on its performance from last year, moving up two places. It is also the happiest city in the UK, which must be some kind of mistake, as I’m always told by those living in other UK cities how much better they are than London. ‘Oh you must come live in Bristol, we have a barge that sells only cider’. Yeah, sure, whatever, enjoy 103rd place, residents of ‘Bristol’.

A pertinent question might be: how do our friends at the Institute for Quality of Life decide whomst is happy and whomst is not? They say that ‘it is not fair to establish a single city as the leader’ (even though that is what they have done. It’s Copenhagen), so ranks are also in bands, with 1-31 considered ‘Gold’, 32-100 ‘Silver’, and the remaining rat-infested metropolises of misery in ‘Bronze’.

Each city is scored on categories such as citizens, governance, environment, economy, health, and mobility. London, the happiest city in the UK but, crucially, not the world, ranks very highly in ‘governance’, which I am sure will be a surprise to all of us living here, and not so highly in ‘health’, which will be a surprise to nobody. If you would really like to get into the bones of the methodology, you can do so here.

As discussed, the Danes are the happiest bunch around, with Copenhagen in first place and Aarhus in fourth. Zurich is in second spot, Singapore third, and Antwerp fifth. Paris is, regrettably, 13th.

But all is not lost, because in another poll that I have found, London is named the world’s most romantic city. Victory. The poll was conducted by the masters of statistics and sexy swimwear at Pour Moi, who ‘crunched the data’ to create an indexed report that looks at three things: the number of times reviewers described the locations as ‘romantic’, the number of ‘things to do for couples’ listed in each city and the number of Instagram posts with the hashtag #datenight[city]. Masterful stuff.

But London wins, so we will take it. ‘Whether you’re wandering hand-in-hand along the South Bank, catching the sunset from the top of Primrose Hill, or sharing a bottle of wine in a cosy pub, romance is never far away,’ say our friends at Pour Moi, and we heartily agree. Where is Paris? It is in ninth. Desolé.

Living, loving, (sometimes) laughing. London.

London has been something of a building site for the best part of a decade as developers and businesses build and build and build. An increasing population, further centralisation of wealth and industry, has led to more and more buildings. They cannot get wider, so they must grow taller. What are the results of this race to the clouds? Many things — some good and some bad. There are records to be broken. Highest office. Highest restaurant. Highest axe-throwing bar.

The highest outdoor swimming pool is now in London Bridge, in case you were keeping tabs on that particular category. Swimming pools in this city can be something of a bone of contention. It wasn’t that long ago that the floating pool in the Nine Elms development got people very upset. The one at Shard Place in London Bridge thankfully is not suspended over the common man of the street, and is therefore not vulgar. Nobody wants to see you doing laps 100ft in the air while they are on their way to work.

So how high is the pool? That is the key question. It is on the roof of the building, which is 27 storeys high, so we estimate that it is some 290ft in the sky. The views, unsurprisingly given the height as well as the pool’s location in prime SE1, are sensational. Can the passing public see you swimming around? They cannot, because the pool does not have a glass bottom and is therefore private. Privacy equals elegance.

Elegance is a key theme of the Shard Place development. Designed by Renzo Piano Building Workshop, which created the neighbouring Shard, the building contains 176 apartments, ranging from studios to three-bedroom units, all furnished by State of Craft and with sensational views.

Amenities include a private dining room (with a bookable private chef), a 15-seat cinema, wellness suite (I believe we used to call these gyms, but who knows) and a delightful south-facing terrace.

It is, of course, in a prime location. London Bridge and Borough Market are on the literal doorstep, and Jubilee and Northern line links can get you around the rest of London in a flash. I would personally just stay in the pool though, floating in blissful privacy, higher than anyone else.

Apartments at Shard Place are available to rent from £700 per week.

We love looking at the homes of others. We love to know how others decorate, and what choices they make. It is why you are reading this article. It is why I write them.

When I lived in New York City, before the internet, friends of my mother would spend their Sundays viewing luxurious apartments, not for the purpose of buying them, but just to see what goes on behind closed doors. Old women in New York have strange hobbies, but that’s an article for a different time.

The best people to snoop on are the famous. Do they have good taste? Are they just like us? I have seen the interior of many a celebrity-home-for-sale. I have seen things you people wouldn’t believe. I judge a home on its merits, rather than its owner, which makes it all the more exciting when the home of someone famous is also a home of exceptional beauty in a prime location. They are rarer than you think.

Graham Norton’s London home in Pier Head is one such example. It is hard to think of few people more famous to the British public than Norton. He has been on the TV and on the radio absolutely loads and for absolutely ages, by my very precise calculations. The good news is he also has great taste.

The property, for sale with Knight Frank for £4.95 million, is a four-bedroom townhouse on a private garden square in Wapping. It is very close to the River Thames. It has four floors, a patio, a private garden and direct access to a communal garden. The interiors, I think you’ll agree, are beautiful.

I am a big fan of exposed bricks, period features, wooden floors and beams. So too the period elegance of the library, with its well stocked bookcase (always reassuring to see that people read) and wooden window shutters.

What of the kitchen? It is modern, but not overwhelming. We have discussed the elegance of functionality. The office/study space is ideal for home working — and with even more books. In between, the contemporary patio space, a bridge between two different buildings.

It is rare to find a house in London that is two things; one half being a traditional Victorian townhouse, the other a warehouse-style conversion. It is clever because it allows you (the potential owner) or Norton (the current owner) to have separate spaces — one for entertaining, the other for private living.

Is this the first party barn in central London? The very literal definition of ‘business at the front, party at the back’.

I am sure many fans of Norton and, indeed, many people in general would have wished to know how that great icon of entertainment lives. The answer, thankfully, is elegantly and with taste. The evidence is right here.

So why would he want to leave? Because all good stories must come to an end. 'I have loved my time in Pier Head over the last 20 years. The house has the ideal mix of cosy and open plan living that spills out to the riverside. It has been the perfect home for many memorable occasions, as well as a haven from city life,' Norton says.

'I know I’ll miss waking up to the river with its big sky and boats gliding by, but as life moves on, so must I. It’s a truly special spot and I look forward to finding someone who will cherish it as much as I have.'

This four-bedroom home in Wapping, London, is for sale with Knight Frank for £4.95 million. For more information and pictures, click here.

As spectator sports go, you might consider ‘marathons’ to not be particularly high on the list. You would be wrong. Every year the London Marathon trots past my street, and there are few better things to do on a summer’s day than have a few drinks and enjoy a constant stream of inflatable dinosaurs, Big Bens, phoneboxes and god-knows-what-else jogging past you.

Bermondsey is a good spot to do it, but a better spot would be on Blackheath itself, where everyone is still excited and happy to be running, rather than a few miles down the road where they’ve realised what a mistake they have made. A good house would be this one, on Vanbrugh Terrace, which is for sale with Savills for £5.95 million.

Marathon or no marathon, there are few better spots in London than Vanbrugh Terrace. Blackheath and Greenwich Park are, literally, on your doorstep. Greenwich Village is an easy and leafy walk away. Nipping out to Kent for the weekend would be a breeze. I am already a bit jealous of whoever is going to buy this place.

What they will get is a 6,800sq ft home that offers six bedrooms and five reception rooms, as well as a delightfully private garden that is some 130ft long. It is Victorian, it is elegant, it is everything you could ever want.

Set over four floors, and occupying a ‘coveted corner position’, this truly is a family home in London that balances access to the city with verdant green surroundings. People might say Hampstead is the best of both worlds, but I am not so sure.

Inside, the home is presented to a ridiculously high standard, and is playfully decorated, combining fun with respect to its Victorian heritage. Bespoke stained-glass by Edgar Philips, Mark Wilkinson cabinets, and the whole project was overseen by designer Charles Leon. It even comes with a hot yoga and pilates studio.

And to top it all off, once every year, you get to watch a bunch of people dressed as anything and everything run 26 miles past your front door. Heaven.

This six-bedroom home on Vanbrugh Terrace is for sale with Savills for £5.95 million. For more information and pictures, click here.

Do you dream of a lavish postcode? How about the most expensive, the most coveted and the most enviable of all of London’s elite? If you do, dream no longer, as The Sunday Times, revealed last month that the postcode in question begins with N2.

Unsurprisingly, Britain’s most expensive road is in London. To be more precise, it is on Winnington Road, located among the iconic greenery of Hampstead; home to the likes of John Keats, Sigmund Freud, Elizabeth Taylor and Helena Bonham-Carter.

With an average house price of £11,906,522, the north London suburban street is close to ‘Billionaires’ Row’, aka The Bishop’s Avenue, but it has now left it in its wake. Perhaps Winnington Road is simply living up to its name — it does, after all, include the word ‘winning’.

The Bishop’s Avenue used to be ‘the Beverly Hills of London’, says Ali Mojdeh of Martyn Gerrard estate agents in Hampstead. However, its recent increase in flats and retirement homes is to blame for its fall from favour. Winnington Road has, thus, become more in demand, amplified by the fact that, in general, ‘people don’t like to move out of Hampstead’.

Perched on the edge of the quaint village, Hampstead Garden Suburb and East Finchley, I can’t help but think that one would be winning if they lived on this very street. One particularly decadent eight-bedroom, eight-bathroom property for sale on the road, for example, is priced £24,950,000. It features an indoor swimming pool, home cinema, pool room and gym.

Another property, this one a mere six-bedroom, is up for the same price and comes with live-in staff quarters, which may be necessary to help maintain the house’s various luxury amenities, which include a sauna, steam room and guest changing rooms. It’s hardly a street for losers. And, the price of the street may be higher still, as Ali informs me that many wealthy buyers favour a discreet purchase, the likes of which will not be found on one of the property portals online.

But is the hefty price tag worth it? I had to go and see for myself.

I arrived at East Finchley station, which is, incidentally, the exact stop at which the miserable Northern Line tunnel emerges into glorious sunshine. A sign, no doubt.

There, however, my journey wasn’t over. I faced a mile-long walk to my destination. If there was a downside to Winnington Road, I wondered if the distance from the underground might be it. But no. Ali was right when he said that people that buy a house here don’t tend to use public transport.

When I arrived, virtue of my feet alone, 20 minutes later, the fleets in each driveway consisted, almost exclusively, of luxury BMWs, Range Rovers and Porsches. The recent backlash against Elon Musk seemed not to have reached the area yet, as there were also plenty of Teslas to be found. I did spot one man emerging from his Ford Fiesta at a rather grand mansion, but upon approaching him to ask about how he found living in the area, he informed that he was the property's cleaner.

This proved a common theme. In fact, I discovered on my trek along the rather long street (or rather, gradual hill) many cleaners, gardeners, building contractors and painters and decorators, but not one resident available for an interview. They must have all been admiring their meticulously-pruned hedges and sparkling cars from their living room windows. Or perhaps they were in an office somewhere, making the money necessary to finance these brigades of home-maintenance service people.

Or perhaps they were on holiday. This is another draw of the neighbourhood, Chris Fairclough, also of Martyn Gerrard, told me. Winnington Road’s quick commute time on the A1 to the nearby airports — 50 minutes by car, which, we have already established, everyone has, to Heathrow. Perfect if you’re in dire need of a break from your unbelievably nice home. Combined with being ‘literally moments from the Heath’, yet close enough to commute into central London, the location is the reason these properties are so valuable, he says. Additionally, the ‘village-feel’ of nearby Hampstead has always been popular. Central London is the draw and yet so is being able to leave it as easily as possible. An expensive paradox.

The local golf club, hidden away on the road, is another benefit, Chris said, citing ‘networking reasons’.

The road, admittedly, is lovely, but there is a sense of unease. Among the cascading wisteria and neatly pruned hedges that mark each mansions’ perimeter there are aggressive signs promising an immediate guard response if there is anything untoward detected on the 24-hour surveillance cameras. Private security officers also patrol in cars. Both day and night, I am told. I spotted several on my walk, where I was careful not to stop by each property for too long, lest I was identified as being in any way suspicious.

Aside from the occasional passing airplane and car, apart from some pleasant birdsong, the street is silent. And, litter free. That is, except from packaging which once housed a vape, a used packet of co-codamol and an empty bottle of bleach. All discarded on the pavement outside the golf club.

This aside, the area is picturesque. Glorious houses on sprawling grounds are the backdrop to manicured dogs being walked by their equally manicured owners, both looking decidedly content with their surroundings.

And then, there is the Heath. Green, bounteous, and right on the doorstep. An iconic London landmark deserving of its fame. In a city so sparsely populated by green space, it makes Winnington Road worth it in itself. If you can afford it, of course.

What do you picture when you think of Hampstead? Perhaps the Heath, with its sprawling woodland and meadows. It’s easy to see how it inspired C. S. Lewis to conjure up the mythical surroundings of his cowardly Mr Tumnus and merciless White Witch in his 1950 children’s novel, The Lion, the Witch and The Wardrobe.

Maybe you think of Keats House — the grand regency building and home of the poet from 1818 to 1820. He may have been living here when he first scratched onto a piece of paper mid-outdoor meander: ‘Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!’ — a line from his infamous Ode to a Nightingale.

Or perhaps you are thinking of another, more modern icon of the literary world: the hapless romantic Bridget Jones. The journalist, penned by Helen Fielding, strolls carefree across the heath in the latest film installment of her story, Mad About the Boy, unaware that she’s about to run into her newest, and much younger, beau when he rescues her from the branches of an old oak.

Whatever you picture, Hampstead brings to my mind visions of romantic scenes in classic settings. Which is why I was surprised when I came across Schreiber House. On the market with Savills for £10.95m, the word incongruous doesn't even begin to cover how this Modernist house opposite the Heath appears in its significantly rather more old-school surroundings. Nevertheless, after the initial aesthetic whiplash has worn off, it must be said that, as one of the few post-War houses to be listed Grade II, it does come without plenty of visual merits.

A furniture manufacturer born in Poland, Chaim Schreiber originally came to Britain to escape Nazi persecution, and his furniture company went on to be one of the biggest names in the industry. He commissioned the then young Scottish architect James Gowan to design the family home in 1963-4 — with almost an unlimited budget.

Flooded with natural light, which is a stark contrast to its rather austere exterior, Ellis Woodman, the director of the Architecture Foundation, described it as ‘the most significant London townhouse of the second half of the 20^th century’.

From afar, it gives the appearance of a tidy block of flats that has been dropped into the middle of luscious greenery. Inside, however, the Muhuhu hardwood floors give the living room a silky, 1970s feel. Throughout, copper rails on the ceiling give an industrial twist to an open, yet orderly, living space with white panelled walls.

My favourite room, out of the 5,600sq ft of living space, is the dining room, where tendrils of green from the outside are visible through the floor-to-ceiling windows, making me imagine having a quick lunch before dashing out to the Heath for a dog walk or chilly dip in the Mixed Bathing Pond.

Complete with one master bedroom, as well as four smaller ones, and a playroom and study, Schreiber House is an entirely untraditional family home. And, although Modernist builds aren't to everyone's tastes, and elements of Schreiber House undeniably jar with its surroundings, it’s a three-storey London house like no other.

Schreiber House is for sale with Savills for £10.95 million. For more information and pictures, click here.

The capital’s first mixed-use ‘wellness village’ is set to hit Bankside in London, as global real-estate firm Hines announces it has secured planning permission for a Foster + Partners-designed development that promises to set the worldwide standard. Benefiting from the expertise of wellness specialist Pillar, best known for the wellness club at Raffles London at The OWO, The Round will be ‘created as a solution to pervasive societal issues, such as social isolation, depression and anxiety, increased incidences of dementia, chronic under-activity and increases in cardio-vascular disease, obesity and diabetes,’ explains Oli Patrick, Pillar’s clinical director.

Ultimately, those who come to work here should ‘feel better when they leave than when they arrived,’ adds Ross Blair of Hines. The data-driven focuses — based on the core categories of environment, movement, mindset, social, nutrition and recovery — will range from air quality, acoustics and a desk space that ‘encourages regular and spontaneous movement’ to mentorship, music, art, breathwork, meditation, cooking workshops and nutritionist consultations. Access to the great outdoors won’t be a problem, as The Round will have more terraces than any other tower in the city and, as part of a 150% increase in biodiversity planned for the site, 100 new trees will be planted.

And it's not just The Round that's going all holistic on us: property developers across the UK appear to be embracing the forest-bathing trend, prioritising the creation of biophilic high rises with dedicated green spaces. With the Global Wellness Institute valuing the wellness real-estate sector at $438 billion, predicted to grow 15.8% annually until 2028, and with Knight Frank’s Wealth Report revealing 25% of buyers now value amenity-rich homes with wellbeing spaces (up from 9%), it appears the trend is here to stay. The phrase ‘forest bathing’ is a literal translation of the Japanese shinrin-yoku, coined in 1982 (but not invented) by a Japanese government figure after numerous studies proved the therapeutic benefits of spending time amid Nature, with its capacity to reduce cortisol levels and accelerate healing.

In London, landscape architects and urban-planning firm Gillespies is a poster child for the movement, responsible for the green spaces around Neo Bankside, and the critically acclaimed Sky Garden at 20 Fenchurch Street (the Walkie-Talkie), the capital’s highest public garden. Now, the Gillespies team and the former head horticulturist at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, have created the planting schemes for Farrer Huxley and Squire & Partners’ tropical oases within Chalegrove Properties’ Landmark Pinnacle project in Canary Wharf, the tallest residential building in Europe, where apartments start from £615,000. On the 27th floor, more than 3,500 plants, such as ficus, fragrant stephanotis, spider plants and peace lilies dominate, rising to 13,000 on the 75th floor’s Sky Terrace, the largest and highest of its kind in the UK, with the UK’s tallest living walls and 360-degree views.

‘Where land is at a premium, this new model of internal gardens on a large scale could be part of the solution for better, healthier lives at the centre of our cities,’ argues Armel Mourgue, partner at Gillespies. ‘The controlled temperature, light and humidity generated within the Panorama Garden will create ideal tropical conditions, where lush, green, exotic bold foliage will thrive even in winter.’

Patrick from Pillar continues: ‘Working with Hines, we have taken wellbeing back to its science: what are the multitude of factors that directly and indirectly affect the functioning of the human machine and how do we optimise these? Our objective was to create a 360-degree environment that facilitates positive wellbeing interactions as the path of least resistance. The Round will fuse physical design and space allocation with tailored service provision, combined with community building and embedded in a centralised wellbeing culture.’

The Round will also be fossil-fuel free, 100% electric and net-zero carbon in operation, with 95% of the 1¾-acre site’s heat coming from ground-source heat pumps; there are hopes that it will be the first high-rise scheme in the UK to achieve the official WELL Community Gold Standard.

The £2 billion project is set for completion in 2030, offering 800,000sq ft of office space and 433 new homes (40% affordable); visit The Round for details.

We all enjoy the wolf in sheep's clothing. The idea of being underestimated by those who might seek to belittle you. A quiet confidence. It’s a strange idea to apply to a property, but one that I like. Why show off? Much more fun to have the nicest house on your street, but one that looks like every other house on the street.

And so we head to Provost Road in North London. On these quiet colourful streets, near Belsize park, we find something quite special, but only if you know where to look. Behind these relatively unassuming façades, one is not like the others. One is a RIBA-award winning home designed by architects Eldridge Smerin. It is for sale with Savills for £7.5 million.

Occupying the corner, this five-bedroom home is achingly modern — polished concrete floors, stainless steel surfaces, open-plan living spaces. Arranged over two floors, the property offers more than 4,000sq ft of living space, set around a central courtyard and with gardens designed by Jinny Blom.

This is a home of the highest quality, as these pictures no doubt reveal. ‘Originally built in 1864, this family home has benefitted from a first class modern extension that perfectly combines old with new,’ says Elias Raymond, head of sales in Primrose Hill.

‘The extensive use of glass creates a striking “wow” factor, making this one of the finest examples of indoor-outdoor living I’ve ever seen. Floor-to-ceiling windows frame uninterrupted views of the beautifully landscaped garden — a true oasis in the heart of the city.’

This home on Provost Road is for sale with Savills for £7.5 million. For more information and pictures, click here.

What do the Italian Job and Paddington 2 have in common? Both involve charismatic protagonists getting into a series of ever more complex capers and both are classics of English cinema.

But there is more. Both feature Alice’s antique shop on the Portobello Road, which is amazingly up for sale with Knight Frank for the sum of £4.5 million. For that, you get four floors of mixed-use space, adding up to 2,349sq ft, in one of London’s most famous streets.

Alice's is named after Alice Carter, who founded the store in 1887, and it is now run by her descendant Douglas Carter.

The shop front, which cameoed as Gruber’s Antiques in Paddington 2, is one of the most well-known in London. It has remained in the same family for three generations, and also features a one-bedroom maisonette on the first and second floors. The property is being marketed as for sale with vacant possession, so sadly you will have to bring your own antiques to furnish it.

The interiors of the property are suitably eccentric, which is pleasing to see. A particular highlight is the pink bathroom, and there is also an outdoor terrace that comes with the maisonette, providing a private space away from the Portobello crowds.

Alice's is for sale with Knight Frank for £4.5 million. For more information and picutres, click here

If you’re looking for a home with political and historical pedigree, you don’t get much better than this five-bedroom residence in a sought-after pocket of Pimlico, London.

Located on the lower ground and ground floor of a grand period property, Sir Winston Churchill called it ‘home’ during his early political career.

One of Britain’s most revered leaders, Churchill lived at 34 Eccleston Square from 1909 to 1913. A newly-wed at the time, it’s where Diana and Randolph, his first two children, were born. During his time there, Churchill was made Home Secretary in 1910 and appointed First Lord of the Admiralty in 1911.

He went on to become Prime Minister and lead the nation to victory in the Second World War.

‘Marked by a prestigious blue plaque, this property offers the unique chance to own a home that was once a part of Churchill’s extraordinary life and legacy,’ says Hamptons, which is selling the apartment for £6,500,000.

The flat boasts plenty of historical details, with high ceilings, delicate cornicing, grand fireplaces, and large sash windows. Nowhere captures this charm more than the dining and reception rooms as you walk into the home.

But step towards the rear and you’ll find a glossy and modern kitchen, family room, extensive utility room, and a bedroom. Plus, two roof terraces which have ‘alfresco dining’ written all over them (in the warmer months).

This is an ‘upside down’ home, where the bulk of the bedrooms (four) are on the lower ground floor. Three of these bedrooms have walk-in wardrobes and two also have en-suite bathrooms. There’s a third bathroom and a courtyard on this floor too.

But if the two terraces and courtyard don’t quite cut it, there’s coveted access to Eccleston Square opposite, which has more than three acres of landscaped gardens for residents only and, perhaps more unusually, a tennis court.

The flat is pretty unbeatable for connectivity. It’s located just moments from London Victoria railway station, where there’s the Underground, National Rail and Gatwick Express as well as local buses.

But if you prefer to stay closer to home, there’s all the sophisticated boutiques and restaurants of Belgravia, Chelsea and Pimlico on your doorstep.

And if you want to follow in Churchill’s footsteps, it’s just less than half an hour’s walk to the Houses of Parliament (according to Google).

‘This stunning five-bedroom flat at 34 Eccleston Square isn't just a luxurious residence — it's a slice of Churchill's legacy! Imagine sipping your morning tea where the great man himself once paced, plotting the future of the nation. With its blue plaque proudly displayed, this property offers a unique blend of historical gravitas and modern comfort,’ says Sean Williams, associate director, Hamptons Pimlico and Westminster.

‘With 143 years left on the lease, this is a rare chance to not just buy a home, but to become the custodian of a piece of London's rich tapestry. Who knows, maybe some of Churchill's legendary wit and wisdom still lingers in these historic walls!’

The home is for sale with Hamptons for £6,500,000. For more information and pictures, click here