Thinking outside the box London Design Festival

Hands down the largestrange of timber doors in the UK

TODDDOORSBEAUTIFUL DOORSSINCE 1952

ISEO B4500 OAK

TODDDOORS

BEAUTIFUL DOORS SINCE 1952

Design showsTake a seatPage 20

NEW HOMES IN BOHO P6 FRONT-ROW BUYS FOR RUGBY FANS P8 SUPER-QUIET HOME GADGETS P26 SPOTLIGHT ON WEMBLEY P42

Homes&Property

Wednesday 16 September 2015

Pages 14 & 20

Thinking outside the boxLondon Design Festival

SIM

ON

HO

WA

RD

4 WEDNESDAY 16 SEPTEMBER 2015 EVENING STANDARD

By Faye Greenslade

This week: homesandproperty.co.uknews: step up becomes too steep for second-time buyers

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

Join us as we take a tour of good-value homes along Tech City’s commuter routes, at homesandproperty.co.uk/techcity

hot homes: it’s the magic roundabout for starting out

THE plight of London’s “second steppers” is revealed today in new research showing the price of an average London terrace house — usually the next step up the property ladder for flat owners — has shot up by £100 a day over 12 months.

Buying an average terrace home in the capital now costs almost £600,000 — up nearly £36,000 since last year. In five boroughs — Westminster, Kensington and Chelsea, Hammersmith and Fulham, Camden and Islington — a typical terrace house now costs more than £1 million.

£800,000: you could run a lovely little country retreat at Upper Farm, 10 miles from Cheltenham in the pretty village of Alstone. The chocolate-box home comes with a separate one-bedroom cottage — ideal to let — with glorious gardens that are perfect for afternoon tea. The house itself is a joy, with a large kitchen, an open fireplace in the sitting room and three bedrooms. Through RA Bennett & Partners.

£2 million: if a swish W9 base is in order, this plush flat in a prime mansion block overlooking Regent’s Canal might fit the bill. A luxe refit to its 1,480sq ft has resulted in a home of rich details, from decorative panels in the main living spaces to black-gloss cabinetry and high-spec appliances in the kitchen/dining room. Glamour continues in the master bedroom, its mosaic en suite and two further bedrooms with fitted wardrobes. Through Foxtons.

LONDON’S Silicon Roundabout at Old Street has 7,000 thriving tech companies, with the availability of affordable housing within easy reach proving to be a key factor in the area’s success, according to a new report by estate agent Stirling Ackroyd. Starter homes can still be found a few stops along the Tube for £300,000.

Trophy buy of the week live in luxury in Little Venice

London buy of the week sleek flat in lively Aldgate with patio and roof terrace

Life changer country haven comes with a cottage to let

New arrival: Alphabeta, with shared office spaces to rent, is one of the latest companies to join Silicon Roundabout

homesandproperty.co.uk/botw

£795,000: a lateral package of Victorian proportions can be found at this converted warehouse flat in Alie Street in vibrant Aldgate.

Inside spans 938sq ft divided into two large bedrooms and bathrooms, and an 18ft open-plan reception/dining and kitchen space equipped

with the sleekest of gadgets. The flat comes with a private patio to enjoy a glass of wine. There’s a communal roof terrace, too, and a mix of bars and restaurants on the doorstep. Through Hamptons International.

homesandproperty.co.uk/lifechanger

Property search£575,000: three-

bedroom terrace family homes like this one in Whetstone, N20 (Anscombe & Ringland) have typically risen £100 a day over a year

VISIT homesandproperty.co.uk/rules for details of our usual promotion rules. When you respond to promotions, offers or competitions, the London Evening Standard and its sister companies may contact you with relevant offers and services that may be of interest. Please give your mobile number and/or email address if you would like to receive such offers by text or email.

Editor: Janice Morley

Editorial: 020 3615 2524 Advertisement manager: Jamie McCabeAdvertising: 020 3615 0266Homes & Property, Northcliffe House, 2 Derry Street, Kensington, London W8 5TT.

The capital must start thinking smallerLondon Design Festival

THE London Design Festival launches on Saturday with innovative and creative ideas for small-space living in our challenging capital.

Adaptable pocket-size and portable new homes are a big theme.Launching at Decorex trade fair this weekend, Bert & May’s first “box house”, right, with two bedrooms, an open-plan kitchen/living area and a bathroom, will be auctioned off via sealed bids. These 540sq ft mini homes are factory built within 14 weeks and assembled on site within a day. All you have to do is find the land or a flat roof.

In Bloomsbury, two recycled shipping containers have been converted into an energy-efficient “smart house” installation. Kitted out

with voice activation systems and automated lighting, this interactive prototype is for brave Londoners who want to build their own homes for a fraction of the price they might otherwise pay, now planning rules are being relaxed and brownfield site building is being encouraged.

homesandproperty.co.uk/trophy

Facebook: ESHomesAndProperty • Twitter: @HomesProperty • Pinterest: @HomesProperty

Homes & Property Online homesandproperty.co.uk with

For more information, including full details of the London Design Festival public days, visit homesandproperty.co.uk/LDF15

homesandproperty.co.uk/whet

EVENING STANDARD WEDNESDAY 16 SEPTEMBER 2015 5

Homes gossip

THE ideal house for Strictly Come Dancing contestants is on the market for £2 million — just in time for the start of the BBC1 hit’s new series.

Alresford Manor near Winchester comes with a ballroom and viewing gallery that are just right for anyone keen to perfect their cha-cha or rumba moves in the comfort of their own home.

The country retreat in two acres would be especially suited to Strictly contender Anthony Ogogo, below, the British super-middleweight star, as it has a boxing ring. There are also six bedrooms, a casino, bar, billiards room, gym and indoor swimming complex. It is for sale with Hamptons International.

Country ballroom is a real knockout

THE Highgate house where Pink Floyd lived when the band first formed is for sale through KFH.

The £3 million Victorian property, inset, in Stanhope Gardens was home to Roger Waters, Nick Mason, Syd Barrett and Rick Wright, above, when they were students in the Sixties.

They signed their first record deal with EMI while living there in 1967.

The six-bedroom house has been refurbished since it was snapped up at auction for £1.2 million in 2012. It has a large garden and roof terrace.

homesandproperty.co.uk/pinkfloyd

Pink Floyd’s £3m Highgate house rocks

No one wants to buy style guru’s home HOME makeover expert Laurence

Llewelyn-Bowen, above, has taken his six-bedroom home in Cirencester, Gloucestershire off the market.

The flamboyant interiors guru, who starred in the BBC’s Changing Rooms, first listed the farmhouse last year,

replacing his colourful décor with a more neutral scheme when it failed to sell. The house went up for sale again at £1.6 million in February but despite its grand 16th-century features, beautiful gardens and coach house, the right buyer hasn’t come along.

By Amira Hashish

Homes & PropertyNewshomesandproperty.co.uk with

Burlesque star’s Gothic retreat

DITA VON TEESE has bought a new home in Los Angeles for £1.83 million. Built in 1927, it has Gothic features that are a perfect fit for the ultra-glamorous burlesque star, right.

The entrance is via a castle turret while wood-beamed, cathedral-style ceilings add still more character.

The 35-acre plot features a pool, and California oak trees dominate the landscape.

Got some gossip?Tweet @amiranews

For more celebrity gossip, visit homesandproperty.co.uk/gossip

REX

AP

The best seatin the house


Will jerk chicken give way to Cheap and alternative Brixton, loved by yuppies and in Zone 2 — it was too good to resist, says David Spittles

Homes & Property New homes homesandproperty.co.uk with

PART of the London Design Festival, Brixton Design Trail kicks off on Saturday for nine days of free events, installa-tions, exhibits and talks

showcasing the area’s creative talents and colourful street life.

It’s a timely opportunity to familiarise yourself with a famous and fast-chang-ing London district that has moved from fringe to fashionable and is even being trumpeted as the “new Clerkenwell”.

Architects Squire and Partners — whose high-profile projects include Canary Wharf skyscrapers and the Shell Centre redevelopment — are the latest arrival, crossing the Rubicon, or rather

the Thames, by relocating from north London to SW9.

The move brings a significant new presence to Brixton and is tipped to trigger a flow of architects and design companies to the area.

The firm is setting up shop in listed Bon Marché Centre, the UK’s first pur-pose-built department store and the country’s first steel-frame building, in a tell-tale sign of Brixton’s grand past now being rediscovered.

A disused Edwardian annexe to the original store, built in 1877, is set to become a new creative hub, with a gal-lery and exhibition space, a bar and café and rooftop pavilion. The project

includes refurbishment of an old fire station and stables, which are ear-marked as studio space for local start-ups and creative businesses.

This is not the only big scheme in bustling Brixton town centre. Lambeth council is moving into a new town hall and freeing up land and historic build-ings for 275 homes and a better public realm. Hambrook House, a 14-storey tower, will have 94 flats (musedevelop-ments.com).

Other new builds are already making a mark. The Junction, looming over a prominent corner, brings contempo-rary architecture and smart interiors. There are 92 light-filled flats across three

mellow brick buildings with roof ter-races and gardens. Two-bedroom apart-ments start at £570,000. Call Network Living on 0844 809 2027.

Park Heights, a new 20-storey tower on the site of a former council estate, lies next to a coveted conservation quarter. Good-value, generous-size flats come with big wraparound balconies. Prices from £420,000. Call 0344 809 2026.

Brixton used to be a cheap alternative to Clapham, but now buyers move there because they prefer it. It is a truly urban place — probably the nearest thing in London to a downtown district of an American city, with all that implies.

Brixton was once a sedate railway suburb, with Victorian department stores attracting shoppers from across south London.

Electric Avenue, so named because it was one of the first streets to have elec-tric lights, was built in 1880, while the splendid vaulted arcades that form Brixton Market, now a “cauldron” of hip foodie outlets and cafés, date from the Twenties. Music halls and late-night trams to the West End gave the area a bohemian flavour but after the Second World War, Brixton fell on hard times. Cheap rooms made it a destination for the Windrush generation of Caribbean immigrants.

Riots in the Eighties turned it into a no-go residential zone for many, but also threw a political spotlight — and Whitehall mega-bucks — on Brixton, eventually sparking a turnaround.

The revival gathered pace in the Noughties. Yuppies still feared to tread there, but a street-cred generation of young and relatively prosperous buyers and renters joined the local cosmopolitan mix.

Brixton became liberated London, a magnet for the unconventional and a crucible of new ideas. The area self-

Grand plans: architects Squire and Partners are relocating to the listed Bon Marché Centre, below and inset, a business block that in 1877 was Britain’s first purpose-built department store

From £420,000: left, apartments at Park Heights, a new residential tower block, have big wraparound balconies

On the curve: Brixton’s Electric Avenue and its market, left, is the heart of SW9

New look: Lambeth’s old town hall and other council buildings are to be replaced with new retail space, a brasserie and 275 new homes, including 94 flats in a 14-storey tower, Hambrook House

REX


Boho chic?

Homes & PropertyNew homeshomesandproperty.co.uk with

consciously launched its own currency, the Brixton pound, or B£, to encourage local trading and production. Notes — the tenner features the image of local boy David Bowie — can be used at more than 200 outlets.

But is Brixton’s character changing again with the seemingly relentless march of gentrification that is engulfing inner London?

You can still buy Jamaican jerk spice, saltfish and ackee at market stalls, but trendy Soho-style eateries, watering holes and boutiques are sprouting up, and some locals fear that Brixton, a glorious urban success story, is in danger of losing its soul. This year, the

local branch of Foxtons estate agents was targeted — its windows smashed and walls daubed with graffiti — by affordable housing campaigners.

Such groups claim the area is losing its social diversity and that loyal local businesses are being driven out by rising rents imposed by corporate landlords who have swooped on the area.

Property values have reached £800 a square foot, and big Victorian houses in the conservation area east of Brixton Hill fetch up to £2 million.

“The changes have been astonishing since I moved here in 2008,” says Gemma Shah, a public relations

manager who works in Marylebone. “Back then there was only Franco Manca pizza parlour and Rosie’s Café in what’s now the ‘village’, and prob-ably two decent spots for a night out.

“Windrush Square, the public space in front of Ritzy Cinema, was pretty dire, too. Now it feels like people from all over London want to visit Brixton. It’s incredible how property prices have risen. I wouldn’t be able to afford my flat now.

“The transformation has made Brix-ton a fun and interesting place to live, but one always hopes a balance is kept, that it retains its independent spirit and remains accessible to people earning

normal salaries.” Squire and Partners is convinced that Brixton will get better — and remain inclusive. For London Design Festival, the firm is creating an “outdoor street gallery” featuring 10 large-scale canvasses by local artists, and is using its huge range of design skills to engage with the community.

Part of Brixton’s appeal is its Zone 2 status at the end of the Victoria line — one reason why newcomers continue to arrive from pricier parts of town. You do have to spend time in Brixton to get to know it. Indeed, estate agents say that the most typical buyer is some-one who has rented locally first. Other buyers are heading up the hill to

Streatham, a couple of bus stops away, where prices are lower and a town centre upgrade is helping to re-estab-lish it as a welcoming inner suburb.

Streatham Park has become a new hub in Streatham High Road, with 250 new homes alongside a new supermar-ket, leisure centre with ice rink, bus terminal and a refurbished listed church. The Print House is a block of 35 apartments priced from £399,950 — call 020 3542 2749 — while Norwich House, in the same street, has 98 apart-ments priced from £250,000. Call estate agents KFH on 020 8222 7200.

brixtondesigntrail.com

We’ll take that one: families are flocking to Brixton for its cheaper houses, food markets and urban buzz

ALA

MY


Homes & Property Rugby special

Take a tour of Twickenham as the World Cup kicks off

Serious fans can buy a new home in grounds the shape of a rugby ball, says David Spittles

From £685,000: Hyperion Tower at Kew Bridge West enjoys lovely views

Thames-side treat: Fitzroy Gate will offer refurbished heritage buildings converted into apartments, and new townhouses

THE Rugby World Cup kicks off on Friday, thrusting Twickenham — the place as well as the famous stadium — into the international

spotlight. Vast crowds will be passing through the popular south-west Lon-don suburb, whose spruced-up train station and town centre facelift will benefit locals and commuters long after the rugby tournament ends on October 31.

Twickenham may lack the cachet of Richmond, a bridge-span away, but residents believe they have the best of both worlds: greenery, open space and river scenes, a useful high street, good state and private schools, trains taking just 20 minutes to reach central Lon-don, plus it is handy for Heathrow.

Despite car congestion, for many this is the ideal London location, with a rich cache of homes of all sorts and sizes dating back to Georgian times, when aristocrats built country mansions along the rural reaches of the Thames upstream. Twickenham’s Marble Hill House, the original “catalogue” model for 18th-century English villas and plantation homes in the American colonies, still stands.

Once ensconced, families tend to stick to the area — and have a say in community matters, such as a new showpiece civic venue with a 320-seat theatre and performance space at Brewery Wharf, a rare new develop-ment of scale alongside the River Crane, which joins the Thames here.

The civic building fronts on to a new public square and is a much-welcomed facility, having a café and bar and multi-purpose rooms for workshops, yoga classes and so on.

The scheme of 82 apartments and 28 houses also has a direct underpass link to the train station. Warehouse-style apartment blocks are a reference to the

site’s brewery origins, while the archi-tecture of the townhouses is Georgian-influenced, with portico entrances, first-floor terraces and rooftop dor-mers. Set in a gated mews, the houses will be complete in April next year. Prices start from £1.45 million. Call St James on 020 3002 9457.

A residents’ action group failed to stop a controversial development that wraps around the train station. This scheme of 115 new homes, shops and restaurants was given the green light after a protracted planning wrangle and is now under way. Visit

solumregeneration.co.uk. King Street, Twickenham’s main shopping drag, has a pleasant old quarter running down to the river, while The Green is a tree-lined triangle with 18th-century cottages. Step away from the town centre and you soon hit upon pockets of leafy seclusion, such as St Margarets, a private enclave of villas nestling in woodland.

Fitzroy Gate is a redevelopment of a listed former convent set in seven acres of grounds butting up against the Thames. Refurbished heritage buildings are being converted into apartments, while 39 new townhouses with up to six bedrooms and gardens backing on to the river are being built in the mature parkland. It is due to launch in November. Call 020 3326 1233 for details.

Prettily named Strawberry Hill forms a neighbourhood on Twickenham’s southern edge. Writer Horace Walpole’s 18th-century fanciful Gothic-style mansion is now a college and its grounds are streets of suburban houses.

Teddington, bordering Twickenham, stretches inland from the Thames to wonderful Bushy Park — one of eight Royal Parks in the capital — and has a long high street reaching down to the river. There are no dual carriageways or high-rise apartment blocks here.

A few boutiques, art shops and cafés have cheered its humdrum centre, while some imaginative new builds are raising the architectural bar.

Kew is another family favourite in this swathe of south-west London. Kew Bridge West has a rugby ball-shaped landscaped space at the heart of the development, which includes 15-storey Hyperion Tower, with views across the Thames to the inviolate acres of the Royal Botanic Gardens. Prices from £685,000. Call 020 8662 6000.


Homes & PropertyFirst-time buyers

A Brackenbury firstRuth Bloomfield finds a rare chance to buy a share of W12

BUYERS are willing to pay a £200,000 premium to live in a period house in a leafy Lon-don “village”, with a pretty high street heavy on delis,

cafés and independent shops.First-time buyers can normally only

dream of such opportunities, but a new shared-ownership scheme from Notting Hill Housing offers the chance to get a toehold in such a desirable area for just under £120,000.

Brackenbury Square is near the increasingly upmarket parade of shops in Brackenbury Road, where locals including comedian Bill Bailey linger over coffee and cake at Bracken-bury’s deli.

“Being close to Brackenbury Village is a big selling point,” says Emma Maddick, head of marketing at Notting Hill Housing. “It’s like a little oasis off Goldhawk Road.”

One-bedroom flats at Brackenbury Square start at £117,500 for a 25 per cent share of a home with a full market value of £470,000. Two-bedroom flats start at £171,250 for a 25 per cent share, and there are also two three-bedroom flats priced from £223,125, again for a quarter share.

The homes officially go on sale this coming Saturday and buyers must live or work in Hammersmith and Fulham (nottinghillhousing.org.uk/shared-ownership).

While this low-rise brick develop-ment’s name conjures up images of quiet and leafy garden squares, it sits on the corner of busy Goldhawk Road — although it is centred around a court-yard garden. But its location means it is no more than a five-minute walk away from the Tube at Goldhawk Road station on the Circle and Hammersmith & City lines in Zone 2. Alternatively, it is 10 minutes’ walk to Shepherd’s Bush station for the Central line, as well as

the market and endless shopping opportunities on offer at Westfield London. Walk south and you are, again within 10 minutes, at Hammersmith, with yet more shops, bars and restau-rants. Nearby, the great Riverside Studios arts complex on the banks of the Thames is undergoing redevelop-ment and is due to reopen in 2017.

THE KNOWLEDGE: BRACKENBURYPast: in 1963, the Beatles recorded their BBC debut at Lime Grove Studios. The studios were demolished in 1993 to make way for new flats.

Future: controversial plans to “regenerate” Shepherd’s Bush Market with new stalls and flats have led to claims that authentic market traders will be driven out of the area.

Trivial pursuit: the red-brick Victorian bus station at Shepherd’s Bush was used as a location for the film Who Framed Roger Rabbit? It stood in for the Acme Factory.

What it costs: the average price of a home in W12 is £706,931, up a fractional 0.92 per cent in the past year,

while renting a two-bedroom flat typically costs £1,989 a month, according to Zoopla.

First-time buy: best value in this neighbourhood is the Thirties White City Estate, where a two-bedroom flat is on the market for £325,000 (homesandproperty.co.uk/brack).

Landmarks: the Bush Theatre, famed for its track record for new writing; the Shepherd’s Bush Empire.

Eat: at The Brackenbury, with a modern British menu relaunched by Ossie Gray, son of the late Rose Gray, co-founder of the River Café.

Drink: at The Eagle in Askew Road, which has a great beer garden, with giant Jenga and beanbag seats, weather permitting.

Buy: designer wear at Westfield London, or hunt out bargains at Shepherd’s Bush Market.

Walk: head to the slightly urban delights of Shepherd’s Bush Green, or the open acres at Ravenscourt Park.

From £117,500: a 25 per cent share of a one-bedroom flat at Brackenbury Square

Village feel: the Anglesea Arms pub in Brackenbury Village, an increasingly upmarket neighbourhood

ALA

MY


Homes & Property Second homes homesandproperty.co.uk with

The real value in South Hams is found inlandBuy a three-bedroom cottage for £155,000 and enjoy countless weekend breaks, says Cathy Hawker

SURFERS, walkers, cyclists, foodies and families will find plenty to do in the South Hams, one of the very best reasons to visit Devon. From

bucket-and-spade holidays spent checking out rock pools to rigorous cliff walking on the South-West coastal footpath, Devon’s southern shore is a winner.

Stretching eastwards from Plymouth to Torbay, the South Hams has some of England’s best-loved coastline, with shingle and sand beaches, river estuaries and historic villages and towns.

Three South Hams favourites are bohemian Totnes, with its Elizabethan architecture-meets-New Age vibe, the lively, ancient port of Dartmouth, and Branscombe, a seaside village only 23 miles from Exeter, where Miss Marple-style thatched homes sit in gardens threaded with genteel roses.

At the undisputed top of the tree, both for demand and property prices, is Salcombe, England’s most expensive coastal town, according to the latest figures from Halifax. Average prices have soared by 69 per cent since 2005 to reach £672,874, more than triple the national average for coastal homes.

“More than 20,000 people flock to the Salcombe area every summer when lettings reach up to £4,000 a month,” says Chris Davey of agents Luscombe Maye.

“The 2015 Travelodge Holiday Index made Devon the UK’s second-most popular staycation region, beaten only by neighbouring Cornwall, so any time that owners don’t spend enjoying their South Hams property, they can get good rentals.”

INLAND VALUE Away from expensive Salcombe, Davey tips Hope Cove, East Portlemouth and Noss Mayo as popular waterfront loca-tions. But he urges buyers not to ignore inland options.

“Outstanding homes can be found away from the water, and although they’re less pricey, no matter where you are in the South Hams, you are only a short drive from a beach,” he says.

In Yealmpton, 12 miles inland from Noss Mayo, a renovated three-bedroom terrace cottage with a small garden is £155,000. Further inland past Modbury, a two-bedroom flat in a Georgian house

on the Colmer Estate with communal indoor and outdoor pools, tennis court and gym in 28 acres — all helpful to maximise rentals — is £225,000, both through Luscombe Maye.

Options on the coast include a two-bedroom ground-floor flat with spec-tacular views in Bigbury-on-Sea for £415,000, and a waterfront five-bed-room, semi-detached cottage over three floors in Noss Mayo for £625,000.

DARTMOUTHA three-day holiday in Dartmouth in 2003 turned into a major life change for Sarah-Jane Chick, of Savills. She fell head over heels for the South Hams lifestyle, moving there from Oxford with her family “lock, stock and barrel” within six months.

“It is a fabulous place to live and bring up children,” she says. “My daughter, Ella, is 14 and will often get off the school bus from Kingsbridge and spend two hours on the beach with her friends. Yes, it gets busy in summer when traffic can be heavy, but it is only for six weeks of the year.”

Chick also recommends that value-hunters head inland. “If you can cope without water views you will get so much more,” she says.

Savills marketed a three-bedroom mid-terrace house in Dartmouth last month, with parking and gardens but no river view, priced at £415,000. Within a week the property went to sealed bids. The same property, directly on the water, would have sold for £750,000 to £800,000 says Chick.

CONTACTSLuscombe Maye: luscombemaye.

co.ukSavills: savills.co.uk

Coastal cracker: flower-decked Foss Street in Dartmouth, far left

‘OUR COTTAGE PAYS DIVIDENDS’HAZEL MACKRILL, right, and her husband Colin, from Hertfordshire, bought a cottage near Noss Mayo last year, after falling for the South Hams while on holiday there more than 25 years ago.

“The landscape and beaches are stunning and it’s so calm and relaxed,” says Colin, 58, a retired finance director. “We returned a few years ago and fell in love with the place all over again. There are many outdoor activities in the area, great

pubs and glorious beaches.”

The couple visit four or five times a year, otherwise renting it out through a local agency. “It is full most weeks from June to September and makes a tidy profit,” says Colin. “Buying a second home in the South Hams has been a shrewd business move and a great life choice.”

£695,000: left, a five-bedroom barn conversion in Down Thomas village (homesandproperty.co.uk/thomas)

£295,000: below left, a two-bedroom cottage near the beach in Bickerton (homesandproperty.co.uk/bick)

ALA

MY


Homes & Property London Design Festival homesandproperty.co.uk with

Colour and gold glow all around at the From rich damson to moody blues, Barbara Chandler says colour flows over exotic fabrics, metals and marble at the interior design shows

PREPARE to be dazzled as colours run riot at the London Design Festival which opens on Saturday for nine days (london

designfestival.com; @L_D_F). A 59ft-tall Kim Thome totem pole at the entrance to the Victoria & Albert Museum in South Kensington, hub of the festival, encapsulates this trend perfectly, flashing a rainbow through giant Swarovski crystals.

For 2015/2016 the fabulous palette can be light and fresh, or warm and glamorous — anything other than dark and depressing.

On-trend materials revealed for interiors this season include timeless marble, concrete, damask,

herringbone and smoked glass. They are abundant at all the big shows, and this low-key look goes so well with the new season’s favoured bold shades.

100% DESIGNBold colour is the theme at the 100% Design show, opening next Wednesday at Olympia, with a public day on Saturday, September 26.

A dozen shades dominate the website and the event, while a central bar will be sheltered by a vivid, multicoloured canopy. Use code ES50 for a half-price ticket, or show a copy of this paper at the door (100percentdesign.co.uk).

TENT “Cherished gold” is the new colour of the year, shared exclusively with us by Dulux. It will be plastered over its huge stand at the Tent London show (tentlondon.co.uk), which opens next Thursday in Brick Lane, where cameos by five designers will illustrate new colour palettes.

For example, Kit Miles, Dulux’s young designer of the year, has mixed gold with tan, chocolate, duck egg blue and pink blush — an instant takeaway colour scheme.

Gold glows all around the festival, from yellow ochre paint to gold lacquer. “Here is warmth and glamour for the home,” says Rebecca Thompson, Dulux colour

expert. Damson and plum add a warm note to the autumn palette, singing from surfaces such as glossy lacquer, velvet and deep-hued paint and reflected in handmade glass, all abundant at Decorex. Or try mauve for a paler and more delicate effect.

“Take your cue from food such as fruity puddings and rich smoothies,” says Lisa White,

Wing it: Sophie Thompson’s Purple Emperor Butterfly cushion features indigo, £58 at etsy.com

Simply red: Charlotte Wilkinson Vessels of Blood vase (charlotte wilkinsonglass.com)

Show stopper: the Gold Glenda Chair by Julian Mayor is a multifaceted work of art (twentieth.net)

Above: all the colours of the season — gold, turquoise, grey and the berry shades — are in Cole & Son’s new Prism wallpaper, £91 per 10-metre roll and 68cm wide. Launching at Focus trade show, Design Centre Chelsea Harbour, from Sunday (dcch.co.uk)


Homes & PropertyLondon Design Festivalhomesandproperty.co.uk with

lifestyle guru at WGSN, the global trend pundits who chose the colours being promoted at 100% Design.

DECOREXAt Syon Park in Isleworth, a vibrant autumnal flower bower, over 13 feet long, will welcome visitors to Decorex, the trade show for luxury interiors, when it opens on Sunday.

The quintessential moody blue will be trending strongly at the show, which offers a public afternoon on September 22 (decorex.com).

FOCUS, CHELSEA HARBOURThe Focus show for interiors at Chelsea Harbour has 500 showrooms

Blue’s trending: Frank Chou’s Nov Sofa, below, on show at 100% Design (frankchou.com)

Bling the changes: the Monocles vintage sideboard by Delightfull (delightfull.eu)

Solid style: Lapicida’s green marble bath tub is £7,800 (lapicida.com)

London Design Festival

open for six days from Sunday, with a free public day on Friday, September 25 (dcch.co.uk; free minibuses run from Sloane Square). Here the mood is turquoise with pink on the side and

Sanderson is the star, showing its new Sojourn collection with turquoise and cerise in ikat prints and weaves, and folk-inspired embroideries. Also look for

kaleidoscopic rugs by Marcel Wanders for Moooi at Chaplins, ombre lamps at Porta Romana, cubist vases at Nicholas Haslam plus embroidered fabrics at Beacon Hill, Jonathan Adler at Kravet and Schumacher at Turnell & Gigon.

Elsewhere, a spate of new fabric collections includes Indigo Bleu by interior luxury designer William Yeoward in King’s Road, SW3. “Indigo is the go-to shade for peace and tranquillity,” he says. The White

Conduit Projects contemporary art gallery in Islington (whiteconduit projects.uk) is staging an intriguing show, Meaning of Blue, from September 19 to 27, with a “blue bazaar” selling exhibits in the last three days.

Japan is considered the ancestral home of indigo, and at this event Japanese artists have made textiles using traditional dyes and methods. They will also be serving blue food on September 26.

Meanwhile, find bright massed blooms in the Shoreditch showroom of designer Lee Broom, who picked up a Queen’s Award for Enterprise at Buckingham Palace this year.

Purple glaze: don’t miss the Shoreditch showroom, left, of designer Lee Broom, who picked up a Queen’s Award for Enterprise this year (leebroom.com)

From £2,889

Battersea Reach | Finchley Road | Notting Hill | Harrods | Tottenham Ct Road | Kingston | Guildford

Buy any combinationnow and get £200 worthof home accessories


Homes & Property London Design Festival homesandproperty.co.uk with

Young designers turn up the heatBarbara Chandler picks her favourites as the capital prepares for hot pop-ups and fun

SHOPPING for your home gets a whole lot more exciting when the London Design Festival opens on Saturday, running until September 27. The big design stores are launching new products, while pop-ups add fun and originality.

Check out listings at londondesignfestival.com and use the search facility on the free mobile app.

At the big shows (opening next week) pick up the just-published London Design Guide by curator Max Fraser for £15. It lists participating galleries, museums, restaurants and bars which are conveniently divided into neighbourhoods (londondesignguide.com). And, for the ultimate in shopping celebration, Regent Street marks its fashion and design month with 13 interactive windows by members of the Royal Institute of British Architects (regentstreetonline.com).

▲FIRST stop for shopping is designjunction (September 24-27), newly installed in Victoria House, 37 Southampton Row, WC1 with 50 pop-ups. Most prominent is Nest, a website for modern design. Arne Jacobsen’s famous Series 7 Chair for Fritz Hansen, above, is £524, while the Vitra Cork side table/stool is £324 and you can angle Menu’s Bollard pendant to make a spotlight (£69). The Muuto vase in glass and solid ash costs £79. All at nest.co.uk. Tickets for designjunction are £10 in advance or £14 on the door. Use code DJEVENINGSTANDARD for 50 per cent off advance tickets bought online.

▼STRIKING design from Slovenian and British brands has been assembled by fashion designer Petra Green. Expect textiles, ceramics, small pieces of furniture and fashion accessories. The Companion magazine rack, below, is by

Gavin Coyle, made in east London out of bent powder-coated wire, £54.

Find the Tranzit pop-up shop at Unit 2, Old Street Station, EC1, from September 21 to 26. For more information, visit room39.co.uk

◄LONDON-BASED print designer Kangan Arora is at designjunction with her new Fluorescent Forest collection textiles. She says: “I’ve mixed the earthy, rich shades of an English autumn with the Day-Glo intensity, colour and chaos of Indian street culture.” Find hand screen-printed and quilted cushions (from £45), and handwoven rugs (from £245).


Homes & PropertyLondon Design Festivalhomesandproperty.co.uk with

▲CAMILLE WALALA is known in east London for her colourful wall art. The artist, above, calls her style “tribal pop” and is covering the façade of Islington design store Aria with vinyls for London Design Festival. Poufs £249; cushions £69; mugs £19.95; plates £22.95. From Aria, Barnsbury Hall, Barnsbury Street, N1 (ariashop.co.uk).

►DESIGNER Richard Brendon has a new range of lead crystal called Diamond, mouth-blown and hand-cut in Bohemia. This decanter is priced at £200 (richardbrendon.com), selling at Victoria House at designjunction, as before

▲THE Conran Shop presents new, exclusive (but pricey) design in a special show for the London Design Festival. This slimline leather Long Cross chair (£2,000) is by Magnus Long, a rising London star who has won two furniture Design Guild Marks. There’s a free design forum on September 24, from 6.30pm to 8.30pm, with Long on the panel. To reserve a place email [email protected] (The Conran Shop, Michelin House, 81 Fulham Road, London SW3; 020 7589 7401; conranshop.co.uk).

▲THE “Timeless Design” show on the third floor of Harrods has classics from the past and icons of the future, with top brands Alessi, Anglepoise, B&B Italia, Fornasetti , Fritz Hansen, Knoll, Tom Dixon, Vitra and more. Take a

personal tour with a design expert every day at 3pm. Sofas at Parker & Farr, reissued and in their original fabrics, are by legendary last-century interior decorator David Hicks. Pictured above is an exclusive new animal

design from a selection at The Rug Company by Barber & Osgerby — creators of the 2012 London Olympic Torch. The price is £735 a square metre, made to any size in hand-knotted Tibetan wool.

▲AT THE festival’s design hub in the V&A Museum, SW7, is a pop-up shop built of Corian, curated by Max Fraser, editor of the London

Design Guide. Goods on sale include this badge-of-honour cloth carrier bag, bearing the distinctive red-and-white festival logo (£12; vam.ac.uk).

SIM

ON

HO

WA

RD


Homes & Property Reader promotion homesandproperty.co.uk with

Mattress is an award-winnerAWARDED a Which? Best Buy for the fourth year running, the Relyon Pocket Memory Ultima mattress features pocketed springs and a 50mm layer of visco-elastic memory foam, helping to regulate body temperature while conforming to body contours.

Available with discounts of more than 50 per cent, you can purchase the double for £449.99 and the king for £489.99. All Relyon mattresses include a five-year guarantee.

To order, visit oneregentplace.co.uk or call 020 7087 2907.

Bargain newsThe companies

listed here

are wholly

independent of

the Evening

Standard. Care is

taken to establish

that they are

bona fide, but we

recommend that

you carry out your

own checks prior

to purchases and

use a credit card

where possible.

To offer feedback

on any of these

companies,

email homesand

property@

standard.co.uk

with “Bargain

News” in the

subject line. For

more bargains,

visit alisonathome.

com or homesand

property.co.uk/

offers.

Iconic set for just £599 — with lifetime warrantyCREATED by Ray and Charles Eames in 1956, the Eames lounge chair and ottoman set is among the world’s most-copied furniture classics. This Wallace Sacks version is just £599 — 70 per cent off the normal price. Everything in the Wallace Sacks Iconic Furniture range includes a lifetime warranty. Visit wallacesacks.com and enter code BN16915 for 70 per cent off the entire collection or call 0800 0114 642 before September 30. Free delivery on orders of more than £1,000.

Moulds let you make like a Bake Off starFEELING inspired by The Great British Bake Off? This range will help get you started. All 15 aluminium baking moulds are handcrafted, with styles including the star base cake pan, reduced from £9.95 to £5.99, and the square pudding mould, now £8.99 from £17.95. Visit oneregentplace.co.uk or call 020 7087 2907 before September 21 to order.

Shabby-chic armchairFOR an elegant addition to any room, try my-furniture.co.uk’s Clouet occasional armchair. The solid oak frame has been limewashed for a chic, distressed look and the upholstery is neutral oatmeal.

Priced at £149.99, including delivery. To order, visit my-furniture.co.uk or call 0800 092 1636.

Alison Cork

Cashmere wraps for a bargain £79CELEBRATE Queen Elizabeth II’s longest-reigning monarch milestone at Within, which is offering Heritage Cashmere wraps at only £79 in its sale to mark the event — a huge saving on the original price of £245.

From one of the last remaining mills in the UK, the smooth-weave wraps feature tasselled fringing and come in a range of shades.

Readers can also check out more offers in the sale, with discounts of up to 70 per cent. To browse and to order, visit withinhome.com/QE2 or call 020 7087 2900.


Homes & Property Technology homesandproperty.co.uk with

London life is loud enough. Caramel Quin finds home gadgets that won’t disturb the peace

The sounds of silence

1 FLUSTERED by a noisy flush? The Grohe Rapid SL WC installation

system comes with every part of a lavatory apart from the porcelain pan itself. The system includes a concealed cistern, pipes and controls and is whisper-quiet — it is the first loo to be awarded the Quiet Mark by the Noise Abatement Society. The flush makes just 21dB of noise, compared with the average flush noise of 75dB. It also includes an odour extractor. Priced from £318.18 (grohe.co.uk).

2 IF YOU suffer from noisy neighbours through the walls, upstairs

neighbours’ footsteps through the ceiling, downstairs neighbours’ voices through the floor, or your own children causing a racket affecting the entire house, read on. British Gypsum has a range of retrofit floor, ceiling and wall panels that soak up unwanted noise without losing much space. For

Kettle is packed with the latest technology. Its Whisper Boil function dramatically reduces unwanted noise, earning it the Quiet Mark.

It also has patented anti-wobble feet and, as you’d expect from Dualit, you can replace the kettle element if it should fail. Priced £129.99 (dualit.com).

example, its Silent Floor product improves on a typical house floor performance by 15dB. Priced from £16 per square metre plus installation (roomsmadeforyou.co.uk).

3 DO NOT be fooled by its old-fashioned looks — the Dualit Classic

1 2


Homes & PropertyTechnologyhomesandproperty.co.uk with

4THE Savortex BabyCurve hand dryer is a bacteria-busting star.

Fear of noise is what puts people off having an automatic hand dryer at home — while most hand dryers churn out around 100dB of noise, the BabyCurve is designed for domestic

use and makes just a very tolerable 83dB.

That is why it was the world’s first hand dryer to be awarded the Quiet Mark for being easy on the ears, yet effective. Priced at around £449 (savortex.com).

5 VACUUM cleaners are powerful so are always going to make a certain

amount of din. However, the latest AEG UltraSilencer USORIGDB+ bagged cylinder is the company’s quietest model to date.

It makes just 61dB of noise, while the average vacuum cleaner makes 76dB, and is quieter thanks to careful design of the airflow, with the motor isolated and suspended in order to reduce vibration. The UltraSilencer is also A-rated for energy efficiency. Priced at £199.99 (aeg.co.uk).

3 4 5

“discuss”


I SNIFFED OUT A BARGAIN BAKERY Philippa Stockley meets a photographer who transformed an old bakery to sell but loved it so much she just had to move in

Homes & Property My home homesandpropertyhomesandproperty

SOME buyers might feel a flip of excitement in the stomach when they see the property they want. Others might feel a tingling across the skin. But

for photographer Katy Barker, her nose twitches.

“I just know when a property’s right, just like I do about photographs,” says the 49-year-old as she sits curled up on her sofa drinking strong coffee.

Restless and an unstoppable traveller “through being an Army brat” — her father, Captain Basil Barker, was a Gurkha — she’s just returned from Lamu Island, Kenya, where she has a holiday home.

Back in London, home is a five-storey, 1,600sq ft early Victorian terrace in

Battersea — although there are a few African hints inside, such as the antique zebra skin slung over the banisters.

This chic place started life as a bakery, with several ovens crammed into a low, sweltering basement. One oven has been kept, though decommissioned, creating a focal point in the living room that hints at the home’s past.

Barker bought her first property, a maisonette with a garden in Wandsworth Bridge Road, Fulham, in 1989 after mov-ing all over the city with her then-hus-band, Damon — whom she married when they were both in their early twenties.

“I was so proud,” she says of taking her first step on the property ladder. She then set up and ran her photography agency in Soho for 17 years, building a

Nod to the past: the big decommissioned baker’s oven creates a focal point in the open-plan living room

Vision: Katy Barker saw beyond the rot at the Battersea property and got £250,000 off the asking price

Soak it up: the sleek and well-lit bathroom has a calming décor

Brought to you by


y.co.uk with Homes & PropertyMy homey.co.uk with

client base while raising two children — Alexander, now 24, and Oliver, 22.

In 2009 she felt it was time for a seismic change. She had parted ways with Damon, sold the business, and bought rights to a book, which is currently in production as a movie, and moved to a country house in Witney, Oxfordshire.

BUYING A CROOKED HOUSEBarker says the Witney house was spooky and isolated. Not surprisingly, the self-imposed exile didn’t last long.

“I wasn’t meeting anyone and I was getting fat, so it was time to look for a little property,” she says. So, when the former bakery came up, she was in like an arrow. “I knew I was going to buy it the minute I walked through the door,

but I tried to hide my excitement from the agent.” The place was pretty much falling down and, says Barker, “every-thing was crooked”. The roof was rotting and leaking, while the cellar stairs and the original banisters were on the verge of collapse. It would all have to go.

Having knocked the price down by a stonking £250,000, Barker called archi-tect Ralf Eikelberg, who worked on her previous house, and found he had just set up on his own. She offered him the chance on the spot for it to become his new firm’s first project. “He was my secret weapon,” she laughs. “He’s so ... German. His attention to detail is incredible.”

One of his major triumphs was the double-height open space between the ground floor and basement. These were

completely separate floors, but while works were going on, the rotten floors all had to be taken up and replaced.

“They’d ripped up the entire floor and made a huge hole between the two levels. Ralf sent me a photo and said, ‘What about keeping the hole open, like that, with a balustrade round it?’”

Because the house had no real founda-tions, they had already discovered that the low-ceiling basement couldn’t be excavated to give it more height, so this was a perfect alternative. The opening draws light into the small basement and creates grandeur — an effect enhanced by a Sixties chandelier hanging in the double-height void.

Client and architect say they worked well together. Eikelberg suggested raw

plaster finishes throughout, an idea Barker loved — “It’s very African,” she says. The house is beguiling, furnished with a mixture of modern and bespoke pieces, plus a whiff of 18th-century bou-doir here and a call of the wild there.

“It was all done so quickly,” says Barker. “I had to rebuild the entire house, but we started in late spring 2012 and finished in March 2013. I put it straight on the market because I’d origi-nally seen it as an investment. But then I thought, ‘I can’t do that, I love it’. So I took it off and I moved in.”

What it cost: £999,000 asking price in 2011, but sold for £749,000Cost of works: £120,000Value now: £1.85 million (estimate)

GET THE LOOKArchitect: London Atelier at londonatelier.comBuilder: Peter Hababiki at [email protected] midcentury modern chandelier try ebay.co.ukFurnishings such as sage green velvet sofa, sourced and made by Pamela Lord at lordandvella.comArne-Jacobsen-designed classic Swan chair from aram.co.ukOne-coat plaster from suppliers including wickes.co.ukVertical radiators zehnder.co.ukLarge painting in drawing room by Callum Innes at calluminnes.com

Katy Barker is at katybarker.com

Beguiling mix: left, cool luxury in the master bedroom; above, a palette of neutrals and smart black in the kitchen; right; the vintage-style chandelier in what was “a huge hole between floors”

Photographs: Charles Hosea


Quick and easy, cheap and stylishWallpaper your bathroom — it’s a class act, says Philippa Stockley

WHERE do dreams happen? Where are City takeover bids hatched? Often, it’s when lying in the

bath at the end of a long day. With this in mind, you need a

bathroom to give you inspiration. Bathroom makeovers, which these days often include big marble or stone tiles and all the skilled fitting work required, can be expensive, but no one ever thinks of wallpaper or even good old-fashioned paint. Paper

is cheaper than tiles — as is even the most fabulous wallpaper — and we can change paint in a blink if we make the wrong decision. Tiles are forever.Paint: leave the lid on pastels and go for something strong and sultry —deep carmine red, purple-black, or an intense, glowing cobalt blue, burnt orange or powerful verdigris green — then bathe by candlelight. The effect is transformative and magical — and if you don’t like it, change it. Wallpaper: we think wallpaper will peel in a bathroom, which could be

the case with traditional pastes, but modern wallpapers have terrific adhesives. And a good-quality paper is capable of holding small amounts of condensation during bathtime, then releasing it slowly again afterwards, in just the same way that emulsion paint does. In other words, it will breathe.

The range is bewildering but if you are going to do it, always go for quality. Hiring a professional to hang it can be expensive, so why waste that effort on an inferior paper? Boutique hotel vibe: Lotus wallpaper from Farrow & Ball

Freshen up: patterned paper, above, can revitalise a bathroom and prove cheaper and easier to change than new tiles

Homes & Property Design homesandproperty.co.uk with


Choose hand-printed papers — using paint, not ink, which give a rich, almost three-dimensional effect. Farrow & Ball uses traditional block printing to create a result that really does look hand-painted, and designs are inspired by archives of wallpapers and patterns from around the world. Its gorgeous Bumblebee paper is created using block-printing rollers, which are replaced every 15 rolls. The bumblebee design is based on the 18th-century bedroom of Empress Joséphine, wife of

Napoleon, and comes in eight colour options. Flat block-printing gives a really authentic effect — you can see the raised edges of the paint. The dramatic black-and-white Lotus pattern (a little Biba-ish) created this way has a boutique hotel vibe. Who could resist that?

Of all the papers, stripes are incredibly versatile. Bold, vertical stripes — which are dragged with sponges, so again look hand-painted — are especially terrific in a dark colour, if you have the nerve. But there are 10

colourways should you want to choose something less campaign tent-ish. Get your decorator to help calculate how much paper you need, and use up any precious scraps to line drawers in the bathroom, or paste round a straight-sided bin for a co-ordinated effect.

Visit farrow-ball.com for detailsBumblebee costs £85 per 10-metre rollLotus costs £110 per 10-metre rollBlock Print Stripe costs £60 per 10-metre roll

Great line-up: dark stripes, right, are a bold but effective bathroom choice

Honey, I’m home: Bumblebee paper, far right, £85 per 10m roll from Farrow & Ball

Homes & PropertyDesignhomesandproperty.co.uk with


Homes & Property Outdoors homesandproperty.co.uk with

Pattie Barron

Beware of the very hungry caterpillarA box hedge-scoffing pest is munching its way across London, so look for alternative greenery

BOX BLIGHT has been bad enough, but now there is a new bug in town, and it is bent on destruction. The box caterpillar has already

munched its way through metres of hedging and defoliated treasured topiary on mainland Europe.

The bad news is that the greenish-yellow caterpillar, which lays its pale yellow eggs on the underside of leaves, and weaves cocoons of white webbing, is wiggling its way across London from the south-west of the city, so damage has already been reported in many gardens, especially in Clapham and Wandsworth.

“There are no preventive measures,” says Jenny Bowden of the RHS Advisory Service, which recommends two methods to try to stop the pest in its tracks. “The more organic route is to use a contact insecticide with the active ingredient of pyrethrum. It’s hit and miss, because you have to coat every insect whenever you see them, and by the time you’ve seen them, they may already have done the damage.

“Alternatively, use a systemic spray such as Provado Ultimate Fruit & Vegetable Bug Killer that will poison the caterpillars when they ingest the leaves.”

Bowden says the caterpillar is a worse threat than box blight. “We’re looking at a rough ride for the future of box. At the RHS, we’re advising people not to plant a box hedge.”

What makes sense, then, is to think outside the box and look at suitable

For outdoor events this month, visit homesandproperty.co.uk/events

choices to replace London’s favourite clipped evergreen. Savvy garden centres such as Clifton Nurseries, though still offering box, suggest alternatives. Matthew Wilson, Clifton Nurseries’ managing director, says the best alternatives to box are shrubby honeysuckle Lonicera nitida and box-leaved holly, Ilex crenata.

“Lonicera has small, glossy leaves and will form a nice tight plant with pruning, although it needs rather a lot of pruning. Ilex crenata is better-behaved and from a distance is indistinguishable from box, apart

from being a couple of shades darker. For a ball or cushion shape, try Hebe topiaria, which has a topiary-like shape without the need for pruning. And yew, although having very different foliage, can also be clipped into shapes such as balls and columns and is largely trouble-free.”

Bowden is enthusiastic, too, about Lonicera nitida because it grows well from old wood, and will usefully tolerate shade, as will Ilex crenata. She also suggests Pittosporum tenuifolium for edging and topiary. In her own borders, she has planted

the more compact Pittosporum tenuifolium Golf Ball, which forms rounded, apple green punctuation points and responds well to clipping.

“For topiary, you could also use Ligustrum delavayi, the tiny-leaved, dark green privet, which has glossy foliage and little white flowers,” she says. “It’s a darker green than box, and is tolerant of shade and any soil.”

For hedging, she recommends Euonymus japonicus microphylla, which has a neat, upright growth. “In a sunny spot, I might consider Teucrium chamaedrys, which has

oval, aromatic dark green leaves, grows to about a foot and makes a lovely edging. And in London, with its sheltered microclimate, you could even grow the small-leafed myrtle, Myrtus communis Tarentina.”

Bowden suggests we see the box problem as a chance to be more creative with evergreens. “Look at different shades of foliage. A lot have gold-leafed as well as variegated varieties.” Call it boxing clever.

Topiary tree: tiny-leaved privet is usefully tolerant of shade and soil

Snail trail: Lonicera nitida Baggesen’s Gold forms neat, tight shapes Smart option: yew is a good choice and has fewer problems than box (buxus)

Clipped: Pittosporum tenuifolium Tom Thumb makes a good alternative

MA

RIA

NN

E M

AJE

RUS/

DES

IGN

AD

AM

FR

OST

MA

RIA

NN

E M

AJE

RUS/

DES

IGN

JESS

SICA

DU

NCA

N

MA

RIA

NN

E M

AJE

RUS/

DES

IGN

JAM

ES A

ND

AN

NE

HA

LLID

AYM

AR

IAN

NE

MA

JERU

S/D

ESIG

N JO

AN

NA

CR

AN

E

AREYOUTNQ?


Homes & Property Property searching homesandproperty.co.uk with

£900,000A FOUR-BEDROOM detached house in The Paddocks, widely considered the area’s premier residential street (Grey & Co).

homesandproperty.co.uk/pad

To find a home in Wembley, visit homesandproperty.co.uk/wembleyFor more about Wembley, visit homesandproperty.co.uk/spotlightwembleyF

£775,000THIS three-bedroom family house in Forty Avenue, Wembley, is close to Fryent Country Park and good transport links (Foxtons).

homesandproperty.co.uk/forty

£259,475A STUDIO flat at the 243 Ealing Road scheme in Alperton, with balcony and underfloor heating

homesandproperty.co.uk/alp

WHAT’S ON THE MARKET? Spotlight

Wembley

Metro-Land is getting a makeover Change is in Wembley’s DNA, where the latest attraction is a new town centre with 5,000 homes, says Anthea Masey

REIGNING Rugby World Cup champions the New Zealand All Blacks will start the defence of their title on Sunday by performing their

traditional haka war dance at Wembley Stadium before taking on Argentina in the tournament, which begins on Friday.

The Norman Foster-designed arch above the 90,000-capacity venue can be seen from many vantage points across London, and replaced the equally famous twin towers in 2007. The old venue hosted the historic 1966 football World Cup final, when Bobby Moore led England to victory over Germany, as well as five European cup finals, the opening and closing ceremo-nies of the 1948 Olympic Games and the 1985 Live Aid concert.

The stadium sits beside Wembley Arena, a fine Art Deco building that was originally built to house the swimming pool for the 1934 British Empire Games and has since hosted major pop acts, from the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan to Madonna and Beyoncé.

Now the surrounding area, previously home to the British Empire Exhibition of 1924-25, is being transformed by developer Quintain into Wembley Park. The London Designer Outlet, next to the stadium, opened in 2013 and there are new landscaped walk-ways, hotels, a new civic centre and library, and blocks of student flats. More than 5,000 homes are promised over the next 10 years.

Estate agent Harry Patel, from the local branch of Hunters, has been sell-ing homes in Wembley since 1986 and has seen huge regeneration, especially over the past 10 years. He says the rede-velopment of Chalkhill Estate, a coun-cil estate with a notorious reputation, has increased the attractiveness of large Thirties family homes on the Barn Hill Estate nearby.

Wembley is 10 miles north-west of central London on the Harrow Road. Thanks to its visitor attractions, it has excellent transport links from Wembley Park and Wembley Stadium stations.

Properties: Wembley is classic “Metro-Land” — the term coined by poet Sir John Betjeman for the expansion of London in the Thirties along the Met-ropolitan line. It has lots of detached, semi-detached and terrace houses from the period, the best of which are on the Barn Hill Estate directly north of the stadium. Homes to the west of the venue are more modest. The area attracts: there’s a strong South Asian community but, according to Patel, Wembley is now attracting a wider mix of buyers. The newly opened Lycée International de Londres has brought French families to the area, while new flats in and around the stadium are attracting buy-to-let inves-tors from Russia and China.

Photographs: Daniel Lynch

Perfect Bedt imes

30 stores nationwide | featherandblack.com | 01243 380 600

From beds to furniture, mattresses to linen and everything in between.

We have all the ingredients for your Perfect Bedtime.

✳Terms and conditions apply

Up to 40%OFF✳


Homes & PropertyProperty searchinghomesandproperty.co.uk with

CHECK THE STATS

■The best schools in and around Wembley■All the latest housing developments in the area ■The lowdown on the rental market

GO ONLINE FOR MORE

TEST YOUR KNOWLEDGEWhere is the last surviving lion of the British Empire Exhibition? Find the answer at

homesandproperty.co.uk/spotlightwembley

■WHAT HOMES COSTBUYING IN WEMBLEY (Average prices)One-bedroom flat £318,000Two-bedroom flat £399,000Two-bedroom house £407,000Three-bedroom house £548,000Four-bedroom house £679,000

Source: Zoopla

RENTING IN WEMBLEY (Average rates)One-bedroom flat £1,203 a monthTwo-bedroom flat £1,493 a monthThree-bedroom house £1,860 a monthFour-bedroom house £2,333 a month

Source: Zoopla

Tell us what you think @HomesProperty

HAVE YOUR SAY WEMBLEY@LucyGarden Loads of great places to eat in the London Designer Outlet

@boodadley Definitely try @wembleypark @londonoutlet for starters then @CineWembley @ssearena @wembleystadium for all your entertainment

@shepherd2210 It has to be #LDO @londonoutlet for great dining and shopping

@MaggieRafalowic Allso Thai on Empire Way for great Thai food

@DanielsDenUK @wembleypark danielsden.org.uk is a great local parent and toddler group

Tasty treats: Rachel Ranson of Miss English, a London Designer Outlet stall selling flowers and cakes

Staying power: many long-standing Wembley home owners prefer to extend rather than move. Postcodes: there are two Wembley postcodes — HA0 and HA9. HA0 covers Wembley Central and North Wembley and stretches as far as Alperton and Sunbury. HA9 covers Wembley Park and includes Tokyngton. Best roads: Barn Hill and The Pad-docks. Large detached houses in these roads sell for between £850,000 and £1.8 million. Up and coming: Monks Park, east of Wembley Stadium station, with Thirties terrace houses for about £450,000 and semis for about £550,000.

SHOPS AND RESTAURANTS The London Designer Outlet has more than 50 cut-price shops, including fashion from M&S, LK Bennett, Next, Phase Eight, Kurt Geiger and Superdry, plus chain restaurants Pizza Express, Prezzo, Wagamama, Zizzi and Las Iguanas.

Regeneration is only just beginning along the High Road, Wembley’s main shopping street. There are new flats and a new square at Wembley Central by the station, but the loss of many of Wembley’s office jobs has hit the area hard. The local council has secured funds from the Mayor of London and the Enterprise Panel to work with local businesses.

The High Road has branches of Primark, TK Maxx and Wilko. Along Ealing Road, there is a concentration of renowned shops selling intricate gold filigree jewellery that attract buyers from around the world — rents here are rumoured to equal those in Bond Street.

Two popular, long-standing restau-rants are Arena for Greek food and Young’s Peking for Chinese food in Harrow Road. Ecco’la is a popular café and pizzeria in Wembley Park Drive. Open space: Barham Park is a small local park in Harrow Road with a walled garden. There are riverside walks in Brent River Park off Monks Park. Fryent Country Park is an area of open countryside and a designated nature reserve dissected by Fryent Way, north of Wembley Park.

LEISURE AND THE ARTSWith Wembley Stadium and Wembley Arena at the centre of the area, there is no shortage of entertainment. There is a Cineworld multiplex cinema at the London Designer Outlet and a new 1,300-seat theatre opens next year in Wembley Park, with a production of The Hunger Games. Travel: Wembley has three stations: Wembley Park is on the Metropolitan and Jubilee lines; Wembley Central is on the Bakerloo line and has Over-ground services to Euston and Clapham Junction, plus National Rail services. Wembley Stadium has trains to Maryle-bone. All stations are in Zone 4 and an annual travelcard costs £1,844. Council: Brent is Labour-controlled and Band D council tax for this year is £1,353.94.

Style statements: above left, Geeta Sarin’s Rivaaz boutique in Ealing Road; above right, Bev Miller, assistant milliner at Dorinda’s specialist hat maker in Wembley Hill Rd

165ft long: the White Horse Bridge connects Wembley town and the stadium


Homes & Property Letting on homesandproperty.co.uk with

Find many more homes to rent athomesandproperty.co.uk/lettings

The accidental landlord

A ‘bargain’ buy-to-let maisonette — next to a sewage worksIt pays to research the local area before investing in a property. Or, like Victoria Whitlock, you might smell rather more than a rat…

TO ANYONE looking to buy a rental property, I would always say it is better to invest in an area that you know well. Don’t try to be

clever and sniff out the next property hotspot, because you can come a cropper that way.

Unfortunately, I don’t always follow my own advice.

When I decided to expand my fledgling property portfolio from two to three, I started searching for another good buy in my own neighbourhood, but prices had risen so much I couldn’t find anything affordable.

Even scruffy little flats were being snapped up for £100,000 more than they were worth 18 months earlier. So I extended my search into streets further and further away, until I found myself straying into a neighbouring borough with which I was totally unfamiliar.

Here, I spotted what I thought was an excellent little flat that no one else wanted. It had been on the market for months without attracting any offers, or so the estate agent claimed, and yet I couldn’t see anything wrong with it.

It looked like an excellent buy, not least because it was a top-floor maisonette with potential to extend into the loft space, meaning I could increase its rental value by adding an extra bathroom with an en suite.

I congratulated myself on finding a little gem in an area that had yet to become fashionable, so prices were much more affordable.

Of course, I realised that the fork-tongued agent had lied about the rental value to get the sale. I only had to look at rental properties advertised on Zoopla and other property websites to work out that it was worth £200 a month less.

No matter, it still seemed like a sound bet. I thought I might be able to squeeze slightly more than a five per cent yield out of it, and I quite

£510 a week: a loft-style two-bedroom apartment in a converted school, now a new gated development, in Priory Grove, SW8, is available to rent through Hamptons International. Visit homesandproperty.co.uk/alrent

fancied the challenge of a small building project, too.

Prior to making an offer, I took the precaution of getting a builder to take a look in the loft to make sure it could be extended, and I also checked that the deeds included the roof space. See, I wasn’t going to let anyone pull the wool over my eyes, oh no.

But I was so busy looking for “the catch” that I failed to smell the rat.

Some weeks after my offer had been accepted I discovered why the property hadn’t been snapped up earlier, and why the location was not, and was never likely to become, a fashionable one.

It was — and this is the real stinker — very close to a sewage works. That’s right, south London’s cesspit lay just a few hundred yards from the back door. I spotted this fact as I was browsing a satellite image of the area, after I had already shelled out hundreds of pounds in solicitors fees and surveys.

Never mind, I thought, it probably doesn’t smell much. Then I Googled it and found that the residents in the area knew that was not true.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, an afternoon’s online research revealed the local council was very strict on residential development, so was highly unlikely to allow much in the way of an extension.

I only had myself to blame, but you can learn from my mistakes. Stick to where you know.

Victoria Whitlock lets three properties in south London. To contact Victoria with your ideas and views, tweet @vicwhitlock

PROFIT FROMPROPERTYIf you’re buying, selling or letting for profit – at home or abroad – here’s your one stop shop

for education, advice, finance and a huge choice of UK and overseas property investments.

REGISTER ONLINE FORFREE ENTRY & FREE SEMINARS

For beginners and

seasoned pros…

it’s all under one roof

130+ exhibitors

75+ free seminars& debates

EXCEL LONDON 9–10 OCTOBER 2015


WHAT’S YOUR PROBLEM?IF YOU have a question for Fiona McNulty, please email [email protected] or write to Legal Solutions, Homes & Property, London Evening Standard, 2 Derry Street, W8 5EE.We regret that questions cannot be answered individually, but we will try to feature them here. Fiona McNulty is legal director in the real estate team of Foot Anstey LLP (footanstey.com)

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

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

Sale regulations make us feel certifiable

Q IS IT necessary to provide a gas safety certificate when selling a residential property? The agents who

are selling my son’s flat say that he needs to do this. My son does not have any tenants and has been living in the flat on his own.

A YOUR son is not obliged to provide a gas safety certificate. If he was a landlord, he would be

responsible for the safety of his tenants in relation to gas and would have to ensure that an annual gas safety check was carried out, and that he kept a record of that check.

His solicitor will ask him to complete a property information form, which includes a section relating to the central heating system.Your son will have to disclose such matters as the type of central heating system in the flat, when it was installed, whether it is in good working order and if it has been serviced recently. If it has been serviced and he has a copy of the inspection report he should supply that, but he does not need to employ a gas safe registered engineer to inspect and provide a gas safety certificate.

Of course, if the buyer threatens to pull out if such a certificate is not provided, then your son may decide to meet the cost of getting it.

Q SHOULD a solicitor complete the purchase of a new-build property that has no completion

notice on it and, consequently, no 10-year guarantee?

A SOLICITORS could complete in the way you describe, but it is probably not wise to do so. I presume that by

completion notice you mean a Building Regulations completion certificate; that by a 10-year guarantee you mean an insurance-backed building guarantee/warranty, and that the solicitor is acting for a client purchasing a new-build property.

For a new-build property, a buyer’s solicitor should ensure that a Building Regulations completion certificate, appropriate planning permission and a building

Fiona McNultyOUR LAWYER ANSWERSYOUR QUESTIONS

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

guarantee/warranty or a professional consultant’s certificate will be provided by the seller on completion, and the contract should provide for this.

If mortgage funding is involved, the lender will insist such documentation is made available.

If the buyer is not obtaining mortgage funding, it is entirely up to the buyer how he chooses to proceed, so he could instruct his

solicitor to press ahead without such documentation.

However, the buyer’s solicitor should warn his client that if he or she decides to sell to someone in the future who needs mortgage finance, without such documentation the property is likely to be un-mortgageable — and even another cash buyer may be reluctant to proceed in case future issues arise with the quality of the build.


Homes & Property Inside story homesandproperty.co.uk with

MONDAYFirst up is our weekly team meeting, which can run for a couple of hours as every department in the business is in attendance — from sales, lettings, prop-erty management and development to refurbishments, commercial, invest-ment and consultation.

As the day progresses, Mayfair comes to life and we have a steady stream of walk-in enquiries. One couple come in looking for a two-bedroom rental apart-ment in central London. Sounds simple enough, but here’s the catch — they need one bedroom for themselves and the other for their three dogs.

While we do, on occasion, have some landlords who are pet-friendly and are happy to allow tenants to move in with a small dog, I’ve never known one to allow three. It could become a bone of contention...

TUESDAYThe main priorities for our property management team today are our mid-

tenancy reviews. Having agreed access with a particularly high-profile tenant, a sportsman who is currently away for work, this is an opportunity for us to review and report back to the landlord on the tenant’s behaviour and use of the property. These checks can be quite challenging, and today is one of those days.

On entry, all seems well — that is, until we reach the main reception room, where we find a collection of boxes with large stickers on them that read: “SNAKES”.

Upon carefully opening one of the boxes — which was not, I hasten to add, sealed — we discover a number of live snakes. Closing the box, we

decide to make our exit. The tenancy does not allow for pets of any descrip-tion, so we draft a quick letter and send it asking for the snakes to be re-housed, or the tenant will regretfully be forced to re-house himself.

WEDNESDAY I have a viewing booked for a sales instruction in Shepherd Market this morning. The client is looking for an investment property offering a good rental yield and capital growth. We meet at the property and, as people pass by in the piazza, we realise we

have a number of mutual friends in common — it’s a small world.

Back from the viewing, I have a quick job-list check with team members to see how the week’s tasks are progress-ing. Since Monday, we have received a number of online enquiries for sales and lettings instructions, so the team are full steam ahead.

At lunchtime a hedge fund manager comes in to enquire about a one-bed-room apartment to rent. We take his details, go through our cache of suitable properties and set up some viewings. It looks like another busy afternoon.

THURSDAYThe busiest day this week. Following an article on the new Pastor develop-ment in Monaco called Le Stella, we have a walk-in enquiry first thing. We work closely with our Monaco office, so we get in touch to arrange a meeting with the client when they are out there next week.

Midway through the morning, a property management emergency arises not far from the office in Mayfair — an apartment appears to be on fire.

When we get there, all the occupants are outside and we liaise with the fire service. It turns out that a faulty kettle stored in a cupboard had somehow continued to boil after being used, with the excess steam causing the alarms to go off. The alarms are reset and the kettle removed.

FRIDAYIt’s the end of the week and a big deal that has been looming looks as if it could happen — a special home with some of the best views of the city, which has attracted major interest. After calls back and forth and a few nervous moments, we finally agree a price and have an offer accepted. The paperwork and legal side will be resolved next week.

Soon we will celebrate, but not before my last meeting of the day, which is spent reviewing our quarterly news- letter with its round-up of the latest events in the London property market. Definitely one to watch out for.

Diary of an estate agent

Snakes alive! Our find in a ‘no pets’ flat causes hissy fits all round

David Lee is head of sales at Pastor Real Estate in Mayfair (020 3195 9595).

Homes & Property New homes homesandproperty.co.uk with

Smart moveoveSmart moveSmart momovoveveveBy David Spittles

Nab a flat in an old Battersea cop shop

Splash out at Nine Elms

A POLICE station sell-off is spawning a wave of new homes in well-connected parts of London

including Hackney, Clapham, Brockley, East Ham, Leyton and Hampstead.

The former “nick” in Battersea Bridge Road is being transformed

into The Metropolitan, right. Flats, 48 in total, have been created in the handsome original Edwardian red-brick station and new-build blocks, linked at the rear by a glass atrium.

Battersea Park is close and it is a five-minute walk to the Thames. Prices from £740,000. Call Linden Homes on 020 3131 2762.

HAVING set pulses racing by unveiling designs for a spectacular open-air glass swimming pool suspended between two 10-storey buildings at Embassy Gardens, above, in Nine Elms, developer Ballymore is now lifting the lid on

a new phase of homes — 179 apartments priced from £602,000.

It is a building site at the moment but, when complete, the homes will be set amid a riverside park next to the new US Embassy. Call 020 7062 8940.

IF YOU want a central waterside home but cannot get a place overlooking the Thames, your next-best option is an inner-city canal basin. Walk along the Regent’s Canal towpath west from Limehouse and eventually you will get to Wenlock Basin, right on the cusp of Hackney and Islington boroughs with commercial wharves and light industrial factory premises making way for new homes.

A faded old street plaque denotes that in 1861 this patch was part of the parish of Middlesex.

Jamie Oliver’s Fifteen restaurant and redeveloped Gainsborough Studios, an arty enclave of flats and workspaces where Alfred Hitchcock made six movies, are among the neighbourhood’s attractions.

Creative companies such as architects, designers and digital

start-ups are also settling into the quiet backstreets.

Regent Apartments at Wenlock Basin has a striking blue brick-and-glass façade that incorporates a mural, which depicts the story of local residents trapped beneath Wenlock Brewery during the Blitz and how they made a human pyramid to escape. A so-called Platinum Collection of apartments, including duplex penthouses, has been unveiled. Prices from £600,000. Call 0344 8099159.

Nearby City Wharf comprises a linear group of warehouse-style apartment blocks with communal roof terraces and courtyard gardens on the water’s edge. The 327 flats are designed with wine fridges in the kitchens and there’s storage for 300 bikes. Prices from £500,000. Call Fabrica on 0800 083 3199.

Join arty types by the basin

From £500,000: City Wharf brings warehouse- style blocks comprising 327 flats

From £600,000: modern Regent Apartments includes duplex penthouses in its striking building


36

An exceptional collection of 1 & 2 bedroomapartments in the heart of vibrant Islington.

Register your interest now

Homes & PropertyNew homeshomesandproperty.co.uk with

FAMILY FIRST HOUSES WITH AN ECO HEART

From £740,000: roomy living space in one of the 48 apartments at The Metropolitan in Battersea

SOUTHFIELDS, close to Wimbledon, is an entirely residential area popular with families who want good-size houses in quiet roads. Cambium, above, offers

modern, eco-friendly new-build townhouses designed around an oak tree reputedly planted by renowned 18th-century landscape architect Capability Brown.

The scheme includes an urban meadow and children’s play area. Some houses have rooftop gardens and garages. Prices from £1.14 million. Call Lendlease on 020 3817 7000.

Buy parkside at EarlsfieldSET on opposite banks of Wandsworth’s River Wandle, the inner suburbs of Earlsfield and Southfields have 15-minute overland rail links to Waterloo.

Both areas benefit from commons, playing fields and parks, as well as rows of steadily gentrifying Victorian and Edwardian terraces.

Westfield Waterside, right, is being built alongside the Wandle — which meanders through 55-acre King George’s Park — to meet the demands of local renters, young professionals and buyers who

have been priced out of Battersea. Apartments have balconies overlooking the park, underground parking and super-fast broadband.

Two-bedroom apartments start at £549,950. Call Linden Homes on 020 8712 9246.

Cheaper shared-ownership flats are also available through Thames Valley Housing. One-bedroom flats with Conran interiors cost from £108,125 for a 25 per cent equity share — the full price is £432,500. Call 020 8607 0550.


37

Thinking outside the box London Design Festival

Documents