On Saturday I proposed that 18U Brondesbury Park NW6 7DL is London's highest lettered house. Nothing's going to beat a run of houses that goes 18J, 18K, 18L, 18M, 18N, 18P, 18Q, 18R, 18S, 18T, 18U, I thought.
Not so. There are in fact over 50 properties in the capital that can beat it, i.e. whose addresses end in letters later in the alphabet than U. And although most of them are flats the list includes two proper houses and that's what I was really looking for.
I'm indebted to Ken for knocking up an OpenStreetMap query capable of identifying all the addresses in London where the housenumber field ends in U, V, W, X, Y or Z. Click on "Run" in the top left corner and it whirrs away and finds all the relevant locations and circles them on a map. Some are ignorable data quirks where a word like 'Bungalow' has sneaked into the number field, but several are genuine alphanumerics so I've been out to visit them. Starting at 55V.
The Bishops Avenue is one of the most extraordinary streets in London, a mile-long Multi-Millionaires Row stretching north from the top of Hampstead Heath. Its houses are huge ostentatious piles - many of them larger than that - usually hidden behind security gates, spiked walls and/or thick conifers. Residents include sultans, magnates, tycoons and the merely super-wealthy, the general pattern being that they buy up a property, knock it down and build something even more extravagant in its place. The general vibe is Metroland-on-Steroids, but with a significant number of plots vacant, boarded up or simply left to rot.
55V, also known as Knolehurst, is one of the smaller properties in that it only has 7 bedrooms. It's tucked into a gloomy gap between a modern cul-de-sac and a subdivided mansion, not too far from the top of the street. The house is only three or four years old, the owners having undertaken a total rebuild to create something sleeker, surfacier and more to their liking. You won't see much from the street, only a big black gate with an entryphone and a fence beyond which various trees are shedding copious leaves. A sign on the railings warns that the site is protected by a 24 hour security service, although that's entirely normal down The Bishop's Avenue, especially on the empty plots. But for those who fancy a snoop I'm pleased to say the architects were so pleased with the interiors that they've included Knolehurst on their website so you can scan down 23 vogueish photos and go ooh, wow, blimey.
Unexpectedly, and even more intrusively, the house is currently up for sale so you can swipe through 21 more photos on the agent's website. Yes it has a cinema, plus a gym, a spa, a sauna, a sizeable garage and, very tellingly, "staff accommodation". The going price for this domestic palace is a whopping £16,500,000, although given it's been on the market since June they might have to nudge that down. What I haven't been able to work out is why the house number is 55V - a fairly recent innovation - because no other lettered 55s exist hereabouts. There isn't even a proper 55 because that got turned into a separate cul de sac, and Knolehurst is actually built within the plot of the original 57. Whatever, it is the only 'V' house in the capital, and if you can stretch to £96,000 monthly mortgage payments it could soon be yours.
We're on Rosebery Avenue, the Victorian expressway built to connect Holborn to the Angel. It passed through an area of former slums whose inhabitants all needed rehousing, so the newly-created London County Council insisted that sufficient new dwellings were built before the majority of the construction could go ahead. Two slots of land were chosen either side of the new viaduct carrying the road across the valley of the river Fleet - sale price £16,300 - and in April 1890 a developer called James Hartnoll began to build. A pair of long narrow four-storey mansion blocks arose, of a slightly lower quality than the LCC would have liked, and by the following summer 143 small flats were ready for occupation, 83 to the west and 60 to the east. You may already see where this is heading.
In September 1940 the Luftwaffe scored a direct hit on one end of the western block, requiring a postwar rebuild, an achievement commemorated in a plaque overlooking the viaduct. In the 1970s both blocks passed into the hands of Camden Council and the St Pancras Housing Association, who in 1987 proceeded to knock together some of the old flats and modernise the lot. On completion, 30 years ago, the two flanks were renamed Rosebery Square West and Rosebery Square East and the current flat numbers bought into play, with 1W to 51W on one side and 52E to 95E the other. No other letters are used, this isn't sequential alphabeticalness, it's a compass point partition using only Es and Ws.
I should say I'm getting all this backstory from a particularly detailed history of Rosebery Avenue found in Volume 47 of the Survey of London (Northern Clerkenwell and Pentonville) hosted on the British History Online website. It includes proper maps, photos of theviaduct and even an old postcard showing exactly what Rosebery Square West looked like in 1910. It is an incredible coincidence that the properties for both V and W in my alphabetical quest happen to have bespoke websites, allowing me to look far more knowledgeable than if I'd just stood outside a random house. It may not happen again.
The two blocks still look quite smart, facing off across the busy thrum of Rosebery Avenue. It's hard to see them as 'Rosebery Square', despite the recessed facades on either side, but that's residential rebranding for you. Most of the W residents gain entrance up short sets of chequered steps, but some enter via what used to be an alley into the backyard, now securely gated. Both the W side and the E side are decorated with shield-shaped plaques listing the churchwardens of the parish of St James and St John in 1890. And if you manage to find the ropey staircase down to Warner Street, beneath the viaduct, you can see the original vaults beneath the flats which are now used by Clerkenwell Motors (for all your MOT and body shop needs). That's 51 Ws in total, and 51Ws beat 55V.
45W Suttons Lane(RM12 6RJ)
This unusual address in Hornchurch is assigned to Ray Moss Auto Services, but because it's not a residential address I'm saying it doesn't count. 45W is a scrappy-looking cabin set back from the street and offers 'Repairs and services from City & Guilds Technicians', because out in Havering this stuff counts. To one side are flats going up to (I think) 45D and on the other side a Turkish restaurant which is definitely number 47, so I don't see how or why 45W is necessary. For all these reasons I haven't been out to Hornchurch to see it, but I'm including it here for completeness' sake. And you know what, there's still more of the alphabet to go...
