The Rightmove Roundup with a Georgian mojo dojo poetry dreamhouse in Kent, plus the best London house for under £1m

Helpless.

I am utterly, devastatingly helpless in the face of this stunning Georgian mansion in Kent, which many of you will perhaps recognise, as the arty-writerly family who live here have done plenty of photoshoots and adverts here. And now it’s gone on sale with Inigo for £2.35m and is, as I always suspected, on the outskirts of a totally normal town (Maidstone) and surrounded by totally normal houses (as you can see if you hit the map on the Inigo page and do satellite or streetview) rather than deep in the middle of nowhere. Built in 18th century grandeur, the 20th century burbs have long since been creeping up on it, like David Walliams on a teenage waitress.

(Quick shout out to my lawyer friend who once said, entirely unprompted, that under no circumstances would she be representing me if I got sued for the Rightmove Roundup, “FFS.” Almost inevitably, it was her “FFS” that really spurred me onwards.)

Anyway the suburban hostage situation only makes me want this beautiful house more because I don’t actually want to live in the woods, I want to live in walking distance from the salt and vinegar crisps shelf at the Spar, and a bus ride from a railway station that takes me to London Bridge in 53 minutes direct.

Anyway, here are more photos of the 7-bedroom house that covers 7,500 square feet and has various art studios in the basement (for him! for her! for the children! as I saw the couple saying in an interview) and which I will flood with my tears as soon as the estate agent lets me in, which might not be any time soon due to various restraining orders and my no longer having a lawyer.

Now!

Onto something rather cheaper but, in its own way, equally as extraordinary.

If I were a lover of period property with its features intact, if I were trying to buy a house in London for well under a million quid, if I didn’t want to feel like I were sticking to the subjunctive mood quite so doggedly that I couldn’t say ‘was’, if I didn’t want to move out to the London burbs but live merely walking distance from a tube station that whizzed to Oxford Circus in 18 mins, if I wanted four whole bedrooms and a front and back garden (the nerve of the woman!) and if I also demanded a lively high street with all manner of shops for all manner of people and a whiff of hipster coffee Macbookeries too - this, below, is the house I would buy:

(NB This is a fantasy newsletter, I haven’t viewed this property, so if interested in making an offer you should deffo hire a surveyor and a lawyer and not blame me when the walls turn out to be yoghurt and all the neighbours hate you.)

No I’m not showing you the outside yet, hold on, just look what awaits inside the front hall:

Original encaustic Minton floortiles!

Alright so they might need a bit of TLC down there at the back, but you can always just chuck some polish on them and knowingly mutter the word patina at your guests.

While nodding like Alain de Botton surely did when he wrote that tweet explaining why intellectuals such as him were too deep in thought to unload the dishwasher.

And look at the finial on that stair post! Come on, pure sex. You may now google the word finial.

Now look at this next picture of a double front door - imagine how happy your removal persons will be when they walk a sofa straight through that.

The fireplace seems to be the size of two fireplaces - perhaps to match the quantity of front doors?

Some people cry about football results.

I genuinely think I could be moved to tears by these banisters:

And all of this lovely sunny space:

You’re asking to see the garden?

Well it’s cute but - here’s where things get really interesting.

You see…

… the garden is a triangle.

But why is the garden triangular, I hear you ponder - is this one of those houses wedged onto the end of the street as an awkward afterthought?

No, it is not. It is at the perfect angle, as are all its identical neighbours, whose gardens are all triangular too, because…

Ok here’s your second clue:

And here’s your third and final one:

Welcome to Clyde Circus N15, a circular street in the Seven Sisters or South Tottenham area, either name will do.

Built by two Irish brothers who named each villa after somewhere in Ireland. Not sure what this one’s called as I’ve broken my squinting glasses.

FULL LISTING HERE

And your walk to the tube will go down Beaconsfield Road, past my old friends Alex and Ella at Beaconsfield Reno. Their architects have loads of ace pictures like this of their house that was inspired by the Hammersmith and City Line and NHS hospital floors, as they told The Times.

And who took me to Pasero last time I visited them - have you been down West Green Road lately? It’s full of beans. Pinto beans, rice and beans, coffee beans. May it not be changed any further by c*nts like me writing newsletters like this one.

(And look at this Green House someone’s built round the corner… my word. How, exactly, is that in South Tottenham?)

(Here’s another house on the circular circus that sold recently for a similar price.)

Not for sale, but give her new renovation insta a follow.

My friend Shiraz Ksaiba, who lives in Morocco and runs Amayour Surf holidays with her Moroccan family, is renovating their home in Agadir.

Their house in the Cité Suisse neighbourhood was built directly after the 1960 earthquake that levelled Agadir and accidentally turned it into one of the more modern Moroccan cities.

The government decided not to try to rebuild in the old style, but to embrace an earthquake-resistant modernism with a Moroccan aesthetic. So her house is a tired pink 1960s villa, originally built by French architects, with an incredibly beautiful garden and a view of the ocean, in need of a loving makeover.

I’ve been gripped by both her and her architect’s Insta stories for weeks now. Partly because it’s been at the visually very bad stage - many workmen drilling into piles of rubble - that only makes the eventual transformation all the more tantalising:

Anyway I persuaded her to start a whole new insta for the renovation so follow that and here we go!

£3.5m? For a house that looks like this?

And this?

And this?

What the - oh ok I see.

It’s on a big plot of land by London terms, approx a quarter acre, that is almost located in desirable Stoke Newington, but more importantly sits right on its own little isthmus between two massive reservoirs.

This is, for London, highly unusual. It’s one of a kind.

And there’s some quite groovy swimming stuff in that West Reservoir.

And you could perhaps say that the property enjoys .. unimpeded views… of these great expanses of water:

Hmm. Maybe Soho House will buy it. Maybe they won’t. £3.5m pfffft. Good luck!

My friend Rebecca Schiller (who held my hand while I had a caesarean section so knows my innards better than most) lives near this wonderful cottage in the North East of Scotland and wants one of you lovely people to buy it.

Now one of my current main areas of interest, when not peering into strangers’ homes or having my guts removed, is school refusal and the hugely varying approaches that different schools within the UK have to the growing challenge of educating neurodiverse kids who struggle in the classroom.

So I was particularly interested to hear the following:

“Word on the grapevine is that the local primary school spends a day in the forest every week, is very neuro-inclusive and informed - including for kids who find school hard to attend. Plus the headteacher is a former opera singer who buys individual presents for every school leaver and keeps the curriculum full of music and art. (Oh and prescriptions are free and university tuition fees in Scotland are still funded by the government.)”

Rebecca also says the following:

Come to Italy with me!

This is the creative writing course that I co-run with Rhik Samadder and Adam Shakinovsky and I cannot begin to tell you how beautiful and meaningful it always turns out to be, plus how we nearly die laughing. It’s funny. It’s really, really funny.

It costs well under two grand for a week, plus you need to buy your flights, but this includes Tuscan chefs making your every meal, unlimited booze if you want it, soft drinks, teas coffees, a huge bedroom in an old Tuscan palace or villa, a swimming pool, views to die for and just generally being waited on hand and foot. This is not the kind of retreat where you have to chop veg in the kitchen - sod that for a game of soldiers. This is true relaxation, but with some invigorating writing workshops too. Or you can just lie by the pool if you’re so inspired you don’t need them!

You will not spend one euro on anything else all week.

Also, here’s MY SHOP!

Plus a new song that I am completely obsessed with:

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