Northern Lights In A City Of Stars
Evening Standard, Homes & Property, 17th September 2008North London has it all when it comes to housing choice: smart City fringe neighbourhoods, leafy Georgian squares, fashionable canalside lofts, gentrified Victorian terraces, commanding high-ground suburbs, huge regeneration zones (notably at Kings Cross), award winning key worker homes, modest mews developments and mansions for those with more money than taste in gaudy enclaves such as The Bishops Avenue.
The heartland – spreading from Highbury to Hampstead and from Canonbury to Camden – has for decades attracted Square Mile and West End high-fliers who find it more convenient than west London and also buzzier and more metropolitan.
Recently, these bankers, lawyers and middle-class redicals have been joined by a young creative crowd, most choosing to settle in Islington (the place not the borough) where new developments have been squeezed into every available corner.
Urban renewal is continuing, with several spectacular schemes opening up pockets of Islington closed off for a generation.
Take Charterhouse: The Square, a courtyard complex of 174 apartments in Clerkenwell launching today. Remarkably the land was a First World War bomb site and is bounded by a small medical campus belonging to Bart’s Hospital and a medieval abbey. Prices from £395,000. Call Currell Residential on 0207 253 2533.