Most unusual buys of 2020: 6ft-wide London skinny house and former butchers' shop among extraordinary home sales

Even in Covid-free times, unusual and spectacular homes coming to market provide much-needed escapism.

And 2020, the most bizarre of years, has certainly delivered on the property front.

From a 6ft-wide skinny house wedged between two shops in west London, to Oscar Wilde's former home or a Beatles' countryside retreat, properties listed for sale this year have ranged from the quirky to the grandiose.

During the 1960s John Lennon and Ringo Starr fled their screaming fans and took refuge at Hartlands, a spectacular Georgian mansion in St George’s Hill, Surrey.

The seven bedroom house went on sale in January with Savills and if you have a spare £10.95 million lying around you could still snap up the fairytale style house.

If that is too rich for your blood you could consider Kenwood, also in St George’s Hill, a six bedroom house on the market with Knight Frank with a guide price of £8.95 million.

Lennon, and his first wife Cynthia, bought the six bedroom Tudor-esque property in 1964 but sold it four years later when they separated.

One of the most spectacular contemporary homes to come on the market this year was Lost House, designed by Sir David Adjaye.

Adjaye built the 4,000 sq ft house on the site of a former delivery yard in King’s Cross with plenty of his signature concrete, a 60-ft long living room, a pair of interior courtyards, a swimming pool, and a sunken cinema.

Lost House, on Crinan Street, is for sale with The Modern House and Sotheby’s International Realty for £6.5 million.

A splendid former butchers shop in Hornsey, north London, became one of The Modern House’s most-viewed properties of 2020 thanks to its spectacular interiors.

Owners Richard Travers, 55, and Andy Acres, 31, had spent 14 years restoring the shop and turning it into a two-bedroom split-level apartment but, after lockdown, decided to relocate to the seaside.

Its Art Nouveau tiles, mosaic floor, marble-topped counters, and standout mahogany payment kiosk (repurposed as a home-office) wowed aficionados of property porn and buyers alike, and the £700,000 property — described by English Heritage as a “rare survival” from the Edwardian era — was rapidly snapped up.

At just 6ft wide this slimline property is wedged between two shops on Goldhawk Road, Shepherd’s Bush.

The five storey property, once a hat shop, has two bedrooms, a garden and a roof terrace, and went on sale with Winkworth for £950,000 in September.

The former home of the royal horses of the court of King George III — converted into a three-bedroom house — certainly meets the green space test. It is set within the 1,100 acre Bushy Park.

It went on the market with Snellers estate agents during the summer with an asking price of £1.2 million, and was sold by the autumn.

Another horsey home went on the market in the only central London mews still to stable horses. Close to Hyde Park, the four-bedroom house is on the same cobbled street as the Ross Nye stables.

For a house with a place in London’s literary history, Hamptons International is selling the former home of Oscar Wilde on Tite Street, Chelsea.

Wilde and his wife Constance Lloyd moved to the then newly-built house in 1885 and lived there for a decade.

Wilde wrote two of his most famous plays, The Importance of Being Earnest, and The Portrait of Dorian Grey, during this time.

The house was subsequently divided into flats and Hamptons International put a two bedroom property in the building on the market for £1.695 million in June.

The basement flat, which would once have been the domain of the Wilde family’s household staff, now sold subject to contract.