Queen's Park
- Simon Deen
- May 22
- 4 min read
It’s been a bruising week.
In case you have been wondering why grown men are peacocking around your neighbourhood in retro football shirts two sizes too small, it’s because on Tuesday night, Arsenal became Premier League champions for the first time since 2004.
On Sunday, their local rivals, Tottenham, play their final game of the season at severe risk of relegation from the top division of English football for the first time since 1977.
You can guess which team I support.
My children are endlessly fascinated by the drama of it all. They wonder why their father talks to the TV, when the TV can’t talk back. They enquire as to how I came to support such a dreadful football team. I show them my signed picture of Gazza and tell them about Gary Lineker before he became insufferable. Their eyes glaze over.
The older one is very supportive. The younger one enjoys trolling me. She will announce at dinner that she’s decided she’s had enough, and from hereon in she will be supporting Arsenal. Then, with a smile, she’ll enquire if that’s ok with me, pretending to actually seek approval.
On Wednesday morning I arrived at my favourite local bakery to meet a client for coffee, only to find it adorned with Arsenal scarves.
The owner is an incredibly affable guy. Which will surprise people with any sort of exposure to Arsenal supporters. Clearly a consummate hospitality professional, by the end of our brief conversation he’d managed to turn my slight ire at his decorative choices into me congratulating him on his team’s success.
Anyway, this isn’t a review of Don’t Tell Dad, as sadly, I’m not a food critic. But you should go. And thinking about it, eating food and being critical would have been a very appropriate way for me to earn a living.
Don’t Tell Dad sits on Lonsdale Road, in the heart of Queen’s Park. Opposite is Carmel. Up the road is The Salusbury. Round the corner is Casa Felicia. And on Sundays Salusbury Primary School hosts the UK’s best farmer’s market.
All of which, and more, led the Financial Times to recently declare Queen’s Park London’s hottest culinary corner.
Which is possibly true. But it’s also only half the story.
Let’s go back to January 2020. The London property market is slowly realigning after 2016’s Brexit referendum and several stamp duty rises.
Caught between self inflicted damage and squeezing until the pips squeaked, the government was having a whale of a time. And then came the global pandemic. More bad news for house prices? Not quite.
Interest rates, which were at an already historically low level of 0.75%, fell to 0.1%. Zero point one percent. And guess what else? Estate Agents, hitherto much derided, were designated as key workers, alongside nurses and doctors. About time, you’re thinking.
And then, a Stamp Duty holiday, as the government made getting the housing market moving one of its top priorities.
Simultaneously, human beings forced to stare at the same four walls, and spend time with the same people, were starting to turn from Mogwai to Gremlins.
Stuck inside, thinking about what their homes do, and don’t offer them. A time when a walk in the park felt like the world’s biggest luxury.
No offices, no commutes, but instead Professor Robert Kelly’s experience on BBC news perfectly encapsulating what working from home actually looked like. People escaped to the country, with London’s population falling for the first time since 1988.
Then, slowly, life returned to normal. At least some aspects did. But priorities had changed.
Pre-pandemic, when asked for a list of priorities when buying a home, 31% of Londoners ranked proximity to a park in the top two. Post-pandemic the figure was 57%. By comparison, being close to a tube fell from 63% to 39%.
In 2015, Londoners were paying a 13.4% premium to live within 100m of a park. By 2021, it was 15.3%. Shorten the walk to 50m, and the premium jumped to 28.1%.
And then came the 15-minute city, where homeowners wanted it all on their doorsteps - places to both work and work out, alongside cafes, restaurants and parks.
And ready to step into this limelight - an area just not fit for, but named after Royalty - Queen Victoria to be precise.
A relatively small neighbourhood where most of the streets either run adjacent to, or lead directly to a thirty acre park. Where you can find the Overground and The Underground, without the need to wander like a Womble to get places. Oxford Circus in fifteen minutes, Heathrow in less than sixty.
An area whose rise has been meteoric, and for good reason. But behind the buzz, the convenience and the deliciousness, what does Queen’s Park actually deliver to a would-be buyer?For me, two things. The first is a sense of community and an identity. It’s a real London neighbourhood, where people actually live, full time. You can belong here.
And it’s also a place where the housing stock is more or less entirely family focused, from starter homes to larger, double fronted, park facing ones.
There’s an abundance of nurseries, schools and children focused amenities, from swimming at the Maqam centre to Gymnastics on Lonsdale Road. With Saturday football, tennis lessons, a large playground, and a children’s farm in Queen’s Park itself.
It’s great for kids, and great for their parents.
Thanks to the support of clients and friends, over the past two years we’ve built a quiet reputation for selling some of the best homes in Queen’s Park. To exactly the kind of people you might expect, but also to an eighty year old grandmother moving to be near her family.
Next up is a once in a generation family home. In the same ownership for thirty years, with only one recorded sale in over a century.
Uninterrupted views, directly facing thirty acres of Queen’s Park. A garden which has been cultivated over decades. Parking for two cars.
Rare, coveted, and ready for its next custodian.
Link to Kingswood Avenue here.