Do the time warp: an Art Deco house in north London, virtually untouched since the Thirties, is for sale

Vintage lovers rejoice. An Art Deco house in north London, virtually untouched since it was built in the Thirties, has been listed for sale.

The semi-detached house on the popular Willow Estate in Enfield Town is full of original features that recall the golden age of British house building.

Cheap land and slum clearances led to a housing boom in London during the Thirties and 1934 was the year it peaked with more than 80,000 homes built — including this one on the Willow Estate. By comparison, Savills predict the number of new homes built in London in 2017 will be 46,500.

However, while almost all the other homes built during the period have since been renovated or extended, the property currently for sale has been decorated with just the lightest of touches in the 83 years since it was built.

As a result, much of the three-bedroom house is a genuine Art Deco time capsule. Original features, from the geometric mantelpieces to the bathroom basin, are littered throughout the property, which has had only two owners since it was built.

“My mother hated workmen in the house so it’s very much unchanged, structurally,” explains photographer Elizabeth Whycer, who has lived in the home since she was born in 1958 and is selling up to downsize.

Her parents, Boris and June, bought the house in 1958 from a woman Elizabeth believes was the house’s original owner.

The property is one of the last houses on the estate to retain the stunning, wide Crittall windows with their distinctive modernist curve.

The staircase with its open wooden banister is also unchanged since the house was built and the doors have their original handles.

In the upstairs bathroom, the pedestal sink with Deco stepped edging “like in an old cinema” is original and Whycer suspects the fitted glass landing light must be from 1934, too.

In the Fifties — when the family moved in — some changes were made but even these have a vintage charm 60 years on.

The kitchen was handmade by a carpenter and there is a 1955 Main cooker, which still works. Elizabeth was stunned to discover at a recent photographic exhibition of the Rolling Stones that Mick Jagger once had the very same model in his flat. The Thirties larder has also been upgraded to a fridge.

Boris Whycer was an optometrist who saw patients at the house as well as in his practice until 1979.

Although he had a successful business and was made President of the British Optical Society in 1975, as an East End boy he was not from a wealthy background. As a result he couldn't afford the down payment on a bigger house when June was expecting Elizabeth — a situation which will be all too familiar to today’s second-steppers.

June’s grandmother, the proprietor of a successful grocer’s store in Bethnal Green, gave the young couple £600 for the deposit on the house, which cost £1,800 in 1957.

Now, Elizabeth is hoping to sell the home on eMoov for £550,000, ideally to an Art Deco enthusiast who can restore it with some period-friendly TLC.