According to the Times, it's the new Hoxton... a once-rundown area, chosen by young artists for its rents, trendified, gentrified, Cityfied, a little bit annoying but still a nice place to live. They've even found a genuine artist's studio for sale.

Adam Ball is selling this two-bedroom warehouse apartment, with classic loft-style exposed brickwork, high ceilings and big windows. It's had a price drop (from £695,000) to £655,000. Particulars here.

A call-out to our readers... send us your favourite London properties [July 11, 2008]

Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate

Back in August, the Rat and Mouse celebrated the Coin Street Community Builders' plans for a 472ft tower on the South Bank. We warned, however, that English Heritage weren't happy. Here's news of a public enquiry... currently taking place at Lambeth Town Hall.

Technorati Tags: architecture, London, property, real estate

93 Albert Embankment, SE1. Three beds, three baths, on the ninth floor, with views over the Houses of Parliament and the Tate. With Fine & Country, guide price: £3.55m.

Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate

When I was a student, I lived in a room that got so cold in the winter the ice settled on the inside of the window. According to this in the Telegraph, students at London's universities - and particularly the richer, foreign students at Kings College and LSE - are about to get a luxury skyscraper, on Middlesex Street, near Spitalfields market. The plan's for a 33-storey building, housing 1,200 students, plus retails space, gym and commercial office space. Presumably, the motivation was commercial property (although - just a the moment - we can't think why), and the student bit is there to fulfill social responsibility criteria. How clever to target the rich kids and make a profit there too. The Telegraph has an artists impression here, and it looks glorious.

Technorati Tags: architecture, London, property, real estate

It's to be built on Doon Street, by the Coin Street Community Builders - a remarkable social enterprise group set up by local residents in the 1970s in order to buy much of the Coin Street district and save it from a planned blanket coverage by office space. The CSCB's mixed use happy ending now includes the Oxo Tower and Gabriel's Wharf. The new tower (designed by Lifschutz Davidson Sandilands) will rise 472 ft, and will - as well as office, educational space and possibly a new home for the Rambert Dance Company - include 329 residential apartments. It's not, however, without controversy. It's been criticised by English National Heritage for potentially ruining views from the St James' Park and Somerset House, and for looming over the South Bank arts buildings.

[image from Lifschutz Davidson Sandilands website]

Technorati Tags: architecture, London, property, real estate

A 2/3 bedroom conversion in The Paragon - a Victorian school conversion on Searles Road, off the New Kent Road. This is a ground floor apartment, but with double-height ceilings and an unusual layout, plus distinctive design features. The Rat and Mouse reader who sent this in drew out attention to the oak staircase and glass banister. Well spotted. Looks like a cool home office at the top. It's with Urban Spaces, listed at £795,000, here.

Tomorrow... a sausage factory.

The Particulars - what's this about?

Nell Gwynn House, Hopton Street - once home, it's believed, to one of London's most celebrated actress-courtesans (and lover to King Charles II) - is listed with Hamptons with a guide price of £995,000. It's an extraordinary little gem, believed to be the oldest in the neighbourhood, and dating back further than implied in the listing. It comes with two bedrooms, a garden and allocated parking. You can download pdf particulars by clicking this.

Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate

It's with Savills, listed at £3.2m... a warehouse flat in Clink Wharf, SE1, overlooking the Thames, with three bedrooms, three bathrooms, one reception room and a balcony... and it was the setting for the Hugh Grant/Renee Zellweger big pants scene in Bridget Jones's Diary. Particulars, here.

[via Daily Mail]

Technorati Tags: celebrity, London, property, real estate

Sometimes the Telegraph can seem a little Thames Gateway-obsessed - but, you've got to hand it to them, they know how to do these redevelopment features. Here's Sheila Prophet with a very nice state-of-play piece, looking at Brent Cross Cricklewood, Paddington Basin, King's Cross, Elephant & Castle, Convoy's Wharf Deptford, Silvertown Quays, oh, okay, and Greenwich Peninsula. She also asks, "Should you invest?" Elephant & Caslte, King's Cross (above) and Silvertown (below) get something of a thumbs up.


Ah smell that? That's the smell of money, Mrs Turveydrop... [October 3, 2006]

Technorati Tags: design, London, property, real estate

Broadcaster Jonathan Meades is fleeing London. But first he has to sell his very lovely London Bridge penthouse. You can read Meades' own story of the apartment here, and then head over here for the particulars, and press this for a virtual tour.

According to a Hamptons survey, 80% of Bermondsey property is selling within one month. Agents explain it as a kind of overspill or creep from the trendy and expensive Shad Thames developments nearby. More here.

... for (big) Baby Shard. Planning permission has been granted for the Renzo Piano-designed shorter (but still 600,000 square feet) neighbour to the Shard. It will replace a 20-storey tower block between Borough High Street and London Bridge Station.

[via London SE1 Community Website]

Big Shard, Little Shard [December 20]

Today's Independent reports on ground being broken in SE1 by residents of the Jam Factory development, who have created an extremely well functioning virtual community, a website, with forum, blog and intranet, called MyJamFactory. What makes MyJamFactory so special is that it's good. Very nicely designed. Very smoothly functioning. Very useful. And treated with respect by the end users - who have harnessed the power of the internet to promote and enable neighbourliness:

The intranet has myriad uses. People might use it to find a cleaner or to arrange piano lessons, says Bond. "When I e-mailed to say: 'I'm going to pick up some wine in France, does anybody want some?' I had 10 orders from people. Someone might say: 'I've had my bike stolen, does anyone know a good lock?' And when someone was mugged recently, people rallied round, sending messages of support."

You have got to love the way Old Father Thames is flowing back into the centre of London life. I walked from the National Theatre over to embankment yesterday and it felt vibrant and beautiful. The Royal Festival hall is being spruced up, the underrated Golden Jubilee footbridge was full of kissing couples and the London skyline was glittering.

And now there is another wonderfully ludicrous new project proposed for the stretch of river between Waterloo and Blackfriars Bridges. The proposed design has been created by the Metropolitan Workshop and consists of a mad web of cables, along which run champagne-bubble cars to a suspended bar. So picture yourself in a bar on the river, with tangerine trees and marmalade skies... (sorry!) Sounds pretty far-fetched, huh, but then again who would have predicted a giant bicycle wheel in the middle of the Big Smoke?

Also lost in yesterday's news... property group Liberty International were given the green light to redevelop Stamford Street's King's Reach, on the south bank of the Thames in Southwark. The Milroy Walk arcade will come down, and be replaced by new shops, offices, cafes... in fact, according to the press release, a veritable office village. IPC (who publish everything that EMAP doesn't, including Country Life and Nuts) will leave the King's Reach Tower. The Tower, however, will remain, and gain an extra four floors and some external cladding which we hope won't look anything like the illustration.