Living in Kentish Town: area guide to homes, schools and transport
Those they commemorate include writer George Orwell; painter Ford Madox Brown; headmistress and pioneer of girls’ education Frances Mary Buss; impresario Richard D’Oyly Carte and the first president of Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah, while in Grove Terrace, Kentish Town’s best road, the plaque in honour of Sir Geoffrey Jellicoe (1900-1996) makes you wonder if the paperbark maple in the front garden was planted by the master of landscape design himself.
Kentish Town has streets of Victorian terraces and converted industrial buildings, some in former piano works for which the area was once famous, and at either end of Kentish Town Road, the main shopping street, Kelly Street, Leverton Street and Falkland Road are much photographed for their brightly painted façades.
At first glance Kentish Town is a settled neighbourhood, still a bit rough around the edges, with a bohemian vibe. But this neighbourhood is one of the largest development opportunity areas anywhere in Zone 2.
A pair of adjoining sites, the Regis Road Industrial Estate and Murphy’s Yard, occupy a large undeveloped area between Kentish Town station and Gospel Oak.
For the last two months Camden council has been consulting local residents on the future of the two sites. The consultation, which ends this week, proposes a new mixed-use neighbourhood with the potential for knitting the two sites into the fabric of Kentish Town.
Three new routes through the area are planned: one linking Kentish Town with Hampstead Heath; another linking Highgate Studios in Highgate Road with Kentish Town West station, and the third providing a new route between the town centre and the market in Queen’s Crescent.
Lots of new homes are promised. Camden has not said how many but it wants half to be affordable.
Kentish Town is three miles almost due north of central London with Highgate to the north; Holloway to the east; Camden to the south and Hampstead to the west. Estate agent Andy Sewell from the local branch of Chestertons says it’s a bustling inner London suburb with quiet, tree-lined streets and good schools.
Parents are particularly keen to get their children into Eleanor Palmer or Kentish Town state primary schools, and then The Camden School for Girls, the top comprehensive school where actors Emma Thompson and Tamsin Greig, comedian Arabella Weir, Spice Girl Geri Halliwell and the leader of Camden council, 32-year old Georgia Gould, were all pupils.
The property scene
The Georgian houses in Grove Terrace near Parliament Hill Fields are the earliest homes in Kentish Town, which was mainly developed in the second half of the 19th century.
Victorian terrace homes range from two-bedroom flat-fronted cottages to the large four- and five-storey houses in the Dartmouth Park conservation area, where there are also Edwardian houses.
There are converted loft-style flats in former warehouses mainly west of Kentish Town Road, while Lissenden Mansions off Highgate Road are Victorian mansion flats.
In Dartmouth Park Road, two six-bed four-storey Victorian houses are for sale, one at £2.65 million and the other, needing work, at £2.4 million.
A five-bedroom Georgian house in Grove Terrace is £2.2 million and a three-bedroom Lissenden Mansions flat is on the market for £1 million.
New-build homes
The Maple Building is a warehouse conversion in Highgate Road with 57 one- to three-bedroom loft flats and penthouses. From £845,000 through Hamptons (020 3151 7649).
There’s one house left at The Furlong Collection, a new gated 18-home scheme in Wiblin Mews, priced £1,495,000 through Hamptons.
Chappell Lofts in Belmont Street is a former piano factory with 10 loft flats, a private club lounge with cocktail bar/DJ booth, cinema screen, pool and gym. Three-bedroom lofts from £3.95 million; two-bedroom lofts from £2.95 million. Through Savills (020 3428 2900).
Holmes Studio, nine flats off Holmes Road, has one-bed flats from £600,000; two-bed flats at £750,000 and three-bed flats at £975,000. Call Stone Real Estate (020 7043 8888).
First-time buyer and shared-ownership homes
Help to Buy is available at St Martins Walk in Vicars Road, a development of 67 one- and two-bedroom flats, of which 21 were for private sale and 46 were affordable through Camden council.
Three two-bedroom flats remain at £585,000, £600,000 and £810,000. Contact Savills on 020 7408 8756.
Renting
Lettings director Tom Hadley at Chestertons says Kentish Town is popular with renting students and City workers alike, although there is also demand near popular schools from families, while the two French schools have brought many French families to the area.
He says one-bedroom flats rent for around £1,500 a month and two-bedroom flats start at around £1,900 a month but can go as high as £2,700 in developments such as No 1 Prince of Wales Road, the former North London Polytechnic building that was converted into flats by architects Allies and Morrison in 1999.
Staying power
Estate agent Andy Sewell from the local branch of Chestertons says there is plenty of scope for trading up and down in Kentish Town, so people do stay if they can.
Postcode
NW5 is the Kentish Town postcode which includes Dartmouth Park and extends into parts of Chalk Farm, Tufnell Park and Camden Town.
Best roads
Grove Terrace for Georgian houses; Kelly Street, Leverton Street and Falkland Road for colourful two- and three-storey flat-fronted terrace houses; Lady Margaret Road and Patshull Road for three-storey Victorian semis, and Dartmouth Park Road for large four-storey semi-detached Victorian houses and two-storey detached houses.
Andy Sewell of Chestertons also likes the Inkerman conservation area where there are mainly two- and three-storey flat-fronted Victorian houses in roads such as Inkerman Road, Alma Street, Willes Road and Grafton Road.
Up and coming
West of Kentish Town Road is generally cheaper. Andy Sewell also recommends looking for well-managed social housing blocks and mentions Kennistoun House in Leighton Road as a good example.
Travel
Kentish Town station is on the Mill Hill and Barnet branches of the Northern line Tube and on Thameslink with trains to St Pancras and Farringdon. Kentish Town West is on the Overground with trains to Stratford via Highbury & Islington.
Buses include the No 24 to Pimlico via Westminster and Victoria; No 46 to Barts Hospital via King’s Cross; No 234 to Tottenham Court Road and No 214 to Moorgate via King’s Cross.
All stations are in Zone 2 and an annual travelcard to Zone 1 is £1,364.
Council
Camden council is Labour controlled. Band D council tax for 2018-2019 is £1,488.43.
Lifestyle
Shops and restaurants
Kentish Town Road, the main shopping street, has a mix of independents shops, cafés and restaurants, along with chain stores and restaurants.
The highlights are Owl Bookshop which holds events including talks by authors; landmark former ladieswear shop Blustons, renowned for its listed Thirties shopfront and now being run as a vintage clothing store by Octavia Foundation; Phoenicia Mediterranean food hall, and Harry’s Fine Foods, a butcher and fishmonger.
Kentish Towners seem very keen on the natural; there is Earth Natural Foods, which describes itself as “north London’s leading independent natural food retailer”; Naturally, which calls itself an “artisan store and delicatessen”, and Natural, a coffee lounge and natural food store. Doppio is a coffee shop with a difference — as well as selling coffee it sells coffee-making equipment and trains baristas.
Supermarkets include Co-op, Lidl and Sainsbury’s Local and the chain restaurants/cafés include Wahaca, Franco Manca and Gail’s.
Highgate Road has a concentration of oriental carpet shops; there are also branches of two Soho House brands — Chicken Shop and Pizza East.
The area’s best gastropub, The Bull & Last, is closed for refurbishment at the time of writing and expects to be up and running with the addition of B&B rooms by autumn 2019. Also in Highgate Road, the Southampton Arms pub specialises in ale and cider from small independent breweries.
The Fields Beneath is a vegan café under Kentish Town West railway station named after author Gillian Tindall’s history of Kentish Town, which is well worth a read.
The Camden Town Brewery was bought by Anheuser-Busch InBev, the world’s largest brewer, in 2015, but it retains the Brewery Bar in one of the railway arches in Wilkin Street Mews where its story began.
Patron Cave à Manger is a Parisian-style brasserie in Fortess Road. The Pineapple pub in Leverton Street serves Thai food, and Ladies & Gentlemen is a cocktail bar tucked away in a former public loo at the junction of Highgate Road and Fortess Road.
At the southern end of Kentish Town Road, Italian restaurant Anima e Cuore is often booked up weeks in advance.
Open space
Hampstead Heath is close by and there are two local parks: Cantelowes Gardens in Camden Road where there are two children’s playgrounds, an outdoor gym and a bowl for skateboarding, rollerblading and BMX riding; and Talacre Gardens in Prince of Wales Road/Talacre Road has a children’s playground and an all-weather sports pitch and is home to the Talacre Community Sports Centre which has a children’s soft play area.
Leisure and the arts
The O2 Forum Kentish Town in Highgate Road is a major music venue. There is a fringe theatre above The Lion and Unicorn pub in Gaisford Street.
The Torriano Poets meet for readings on Sunday evenings in the Torriano Meeting House community arts centre in Torriano Avenue.
Kentish Town Sports Centre in Grafton Road, the local council swimming facility, has three pools in beautifully restored Victorian baths plus fitness and karate classes and a gym.
Schools
Kentish Town has a good choice of state schools with “good” or better Ofsted ratings.
Primary school
Parents are particularly keen on two primary schools — Kentish Town CofE in Islip Street and Eleanor Palmer in Lupton Street — and one comprehensive, The Camden School for Girls (ages 11 to 18, with boys in the sixth form) in Sandall Road, all of which are rated “outstanding”.
The other “outstanding” local state primary schools are: Torriano in Torriano Avenue; Holy Trinity & St Silas CofE in Clarence Way, and Gospel Oak in Mansfield Road.
Comprehensive
There is a cluster of three comprehensive schools all judged to be “good” in Highgate Road: Parliament Hill (girls, ages 11 to 18); William Ellis (boys, ages 11 to 18) and La Sainte Union RC (girls, ages 11 to 18).
Acland Burghley School (co-ed, ages 11 to 18) in Burghley Road, also rated “good”, runs a consortium sixth form called LaSWAP.
Private
Two private French bilingual schools attracting French families to Kentish Town are La Petite École Bilingue (co-ed, ages three to 11) in Vicars Road and Collège Français Bilingue de Londres (co-ed, ages five to 16) in Holmes Road.
There are two leading private schools in nearby Highgate: Highgate School (co-ed, ages three to 18) in North Road and Channing (girls ages four to 18) in The Bank off Highgate Hill.