Warehouse living in the heart of West London

Portobello Road was once a country path known as Green’s Lane, leading between Notting Hill Gate and Portobello Farm. But, in the mid-nineteenth century, the Metropolitan Railway extended to Ladbroke Grove. Over the next few decades, the farm’s 180 acres were covered with terrace housing.

By the late Victorian Era, the neighbourhood contained a school, a care home and a large hospital known as the Marylebone Infirmary, which opened in 1881. Hewer Street was laid out around the same time as the hospital, its southern side lined with workers’ cottages, while the northern side featured a series of workshops and warehouse spaces.

A map from 1900 labels these buildings a laundry, while an account written during the war describes them as a dairy. But by the end of the century, these buildings had become derelict.

More recently, a section of the former dairy was acquired by a well-known retail architect, who transformed the building into a home. Now, there are three bedrooms on the ground floor and a main living area on the first, which allows for double-height ceilings and an open-plan lateral layout upstairs.

The first floor is topped with a vaulted wooden roof and a long lantern skylight. This not only fills the living area with natural light, but also contains a mezzanine reading room leading out onto a roof terrace. Meanwhile, metal rafters and staircases evoke the building’s working heritage, along with the polished concrete flooring for the lower levels. It results in the kind of flexible domestic setting that is popular in the reclaimed industrial neighbourhoods of East London, but much rarer in West London.

‘You really live in it,’ the current owner explains, adding: ‘For creative people who have a fuzzy boundary between work life and professional life, it’s a space you can fill with musical instruments, artworks. People say they have a lovely expansive sense of freedom whenever they walk in. And it’s a wonderful space to think in, too: something about cubic footage is so much better than square footage.’

That sense of creative possibility is also clear from the property’s interiors. The walls are decorated with contemporary art, while instruments and sculptural pieces of furniture stand along the edges of the room. Most striking are the tags from two of London’s most infamous graffiti artists – Tox and 10 Foot – decorating one of the walls.

The artists were both visitors to the house, and the current owner jokes about popping to the loo, only to come back and find the walls covered with graffiti. Pieces of street furniture tagged with their names sell for thousands of pounds, but as he can’t remove the plasterboard, these unique artworks will stay with the house.

The current owner has lived in Kensington and Chelsea for twenty-five years. Moving to Hewer Street meant he could swap the traditional London terrace house, with rooms laid out over three or four storeys, for a more open-plan living experience. At the same time, he explains, ‘it’s an absolute sanctuary, one of the quietest houses I have ever lived in.’

However, the neighbourhood is exceptionally well-located. The train from Ladbroke Grove gives easy access to Liverpool Street. The Westway leads out to the M25 and Oxfordshire, making an easy drive into the countryside. And a new HS2 station is currently under construction at nearby Old Oak Common.

But the roads surrounding Hewer Street still preserve the atmosphere of a multicultural village. Notting Hill was once celebrated for its creativity, and actors, architects, photographers and television producers have all lived in nearby properties.

Nonetheless, the neighbourhood is becoming more well-known, with new restaurants and independent boutiques opening in the surrounding streets. ‘If it made sense to stay here, I would,’ the owner concludes. ‘In eight or ten years, it will be a new jewel in the crown of Kensington and Chelsea.’

Explore Hewer Street here.