PROPERTY | STYLE BIBLE
MEWS FLASH
Wo r d s N I G E L L E W I S
From coach house to des res
T
his ironic that a type of property built exclusively to house the servants of London’s super wealthy during the 18th and 19th centuries has ended up being the latest and most fashionable type of property that London’s well-heeled want to live in. Mews homes, which were designed to keep the horses and servants who looked after them away from the front of London’s
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Victorian mansions, were until recently seen as a second-best choice for today’s wealthy house hunters. But that is no longer so. Yes, they are usually cheaper than the huge houses they back onto but nevertheless they are doing their best to catch up. While a large white stucco Regency mansion in Kensington might fetch £40 million at the moment, the mews houses at its back can achieve up to £15 million. Built in their thousands all over London, mews houses are most commonly found in Mayfair, Marylebone, Knightsbridge, Kensington, Bayswater, Notting Hill and Fitzrovia. They are named after the annual ‘mewing’ or moulting that Falcons go through each year because the buildings in which these birds lived (during the 13th and
14th centuries) later became stables. And the name stuck. “Mews homes are also found in lesser numbers in Battersea and Fulham but not so much in the latter as this area developed at a time when the incomes of even the wealthy could no longer pay for private coaches and coachmen,” James Robinson of estate agent Lurot Brand. But wherever they are found, mews homes have been enjoying a renaissance over the past five or six years. “Above all, buyers like them because they are in quiet, private roads that are often dead ends,” says James Robinson. “Mews residents also usually enjoy a really amazing sense of community. Also, many come with their own garages which, in central London can be a rare and valuable feature.” Such privacy makes them extremely popular with celebrities. There’s a list of over a 100 who have owned or currently live in mews homes including WW2 pilot Douglas Bader, F1 driver James Hunt, Sharon Osbourne, Paula Yates, Sean Bean, Daniel Craig and perhaps the most famous mews house of all, the property where the Profumo affair played out (in Wimpole Mews, Marylebone). But search in London for a mews and you’ll soon discover that ‘mews style’ new homes are almost as numerous as their period counterparts. In recent years developers have realised ‘mews’ and its connotations of bijou luxury can be applied to almost any small new-built townhouse in London – although some do lay them out as recognisable mews streets, but without any links to falconry or servants.
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