Living in Earls Court: area guide to homes, schools and transport links

An £8 billion project to regenerate Earls Court will bring 8,000 new homes to central London - 1,500 of them affordable - with a new high street running through the centre.
Anthea Masey12 February 2016

Earls Court is at the centre of one of the biggest redevelopments in London. There was a time not so long ago when it was a neighbourhood of tatty bedsits and cheap hotels. It was more famous for its Art Deco exhibition centre directly opposite the Warwick Road entrance to Earl’s Court tube station than the quality of its housing stock.

However, the bedsits and hotels have been largely swept away and replaced by spacious flats to rival those in nearby South Kensington.

The famous exhibition centre closed in December. It is to be replaced by an £8 billion scheme that will replace the two exhibition halls, the exhibition car park, a Transport for London repair depot and two council estates. The result will be the creation of a new neighbourhood stretching from Warwick Road in the east to North End Road.

Over the next 15 years, Capital & Counties Properties (Capco), the developer, working from a Sir Terry Farrell masterplan, is proposing to build 7,500 new homes, of which 1,500 will be affordable, with a new high street running through the centre.

Layouts are planned to work sympathetically with much of the traditional architecture of squares, and mansion blocks that make up large parts of the wider area of Earls Court.

A new primary school will be built and £5-million worth of improvements will be made to West Brompton station, including lengthening the platforms.

The imposing Empress State Building will be vacated by the Metropolitan Police in 2019 and converted into an additional 500 homes.

Capco is a UK company, working with a UK team. There will be a large sporting and leisure centre in the middle of the new estate. Prices start at £595,000 in the first phase, called Lillie Square, already being sold off-plan, with penthouses of £1.575 million.

Spear Mews is in the heart of Earls Court, ideally located for access to Earls Court underground station

What there is to buy in Earls Court

Earls Court is three miles from central London with the busy Cromwell Road to the north; South Kensington and Chelsea to the west; Fulham to the south and West Kensington and  Barons Court to the east. The almost equally busy Warwick Road runs through the area. 

It has garden squares and roads of  red brick mansion flats and large four and five-storey terrace houses. There is also an enclave of smaller terrace houses in the area known as  Kenway Village around Kenway Road to the east of Earls Court Road. There are also several mews tucked away.

Estate agent Ian Barrett of Marsh & Parsons describes the area as eclectic. “Earls Court is definitely flatland, but flats range from large 3,000sq ft  mansion flats to studios selling for around £350,000, and price per square foot can vary from £850 a square foot for a basement flat in the less favoured roads west of Earls Court Road to as much as £2,400 a square foot for a first floor flat in Bramham Gardens.”

Travel
Earl’s Court is on the District and Piccadilly lines. West Brompton is on the Wimbledon branch of the District Line; the Overground has trains to Clapham Junction and Stratford; and there are trains to Watford and East Croydon. Earl’s Court is in Zone 1 and West Brompton is in Zone 2; an annual travelcard to or in Zone 1 is £1,256.

Renting
French families, in particular, like the area as it is cheaper than South Kensington, where their children are educated at the Lycée Français Charles de Gaulle. Jamie Zamal, the rental manager at Marsh & Parsons, says Earls Court is also popular with young sharers who expect to pay between £495 and £1,300 a week for a two-bedroom flat. 

Apartments in the prestigious Earls Court Square are available to rent from £1600 pcm

Postcode
SW5 is the Earls Court postcode. It covers most of the area, although south of Brompton Road falls within the SW10 West Brompton postcode. The development of the exhibition site falls into W14, the West Kensington postcode. 

Best roads
The garden squares to the east of Earls Court Road: Bramham Gardens, Barkston Gardens and  Courtfield Gardens.
 

What’s new
Lillie Square (www.lilliesquare.com, 020 7381 9800), on the former Earls Court car park on Seagrave Road, is the first phase of the redevelopment of the exhibition site. Here, developer Capco is building 808 new flats of which 200 will be affordable. Designed by architects Paul Davies & Partners and with landscape design by Andy Sturgeon, there will be a new public square off Lillie Road and a new green corridor running along Counter’s Creek. First completions are next year; and prices for the penthouses in phase one start at £1.575 million. 

The Landau (020 7205 2657) is a development of 89 flats in Farm Lane; a joint venture from Mount Anvil and housing association Affinity Sutton; prices start at £915,000 for a one-bedroom flat and the development completes later this year. 

A site on the corner of Old Brompton Road and Warwick Road is being developed in a traditional style as a small Sainsbury’s supermarket and 11 flats.

The area attracts
Buyers are British, French, Italian, Middle Eastern and are also from the Gulf States. There are also investment buyers driven by the expectation that the huge Earls Court development will lead to strong capital growth.

Staying power
Families who decide they want a house move to Fulham and Brook Green. 

Council
Kensington & Chelsea (Conservative-controlled); Band D council tax: 2014/2015 year: £1066.79.

Photographs: Daniel Lynch

Lifestyle

Earls Court boasts the famous Troubadour café, which first opened in 1954 and is still going strong.


Leisure and the arts
The Finborough Theatre on Finborough Road is a leading fringe theatre and there are concerts in St Cuthbert’s Church in Philbeach Gardens. 

Shops and restaurants
Earls Court Road, the main shopping street, is a hangover from the days when Earls Court was still dominated by bedsits and cheap hotels, although there are some fine Victorian pubs. The street has chain restaurants such as Zizzi, Wagamama, Byron and Nando’s. 

Garnier is a popular traditional French restaurant. There are two top cocktail bars: Evans & Peel Detective Agency and Ping Kitchen, Bar & Ping Pong Rooms with real ping pong tables. Along Old Brompton Road there is a lovely flower shop Only Roses which imports roses from Ecuador, reputedly the best in the world.

There are cafés, too, including the famous Troubadour, which first opened in 1954 and is still going strong with its all-day café, a wine shop and live music and poetry.

Open spaces
Holland Park is the nearest large park. Brompton Cemetery is run by The Royal Parks; a tranquil area of 39 acres with 35,000 monuments and graves; it is a Site of Nature Conservation Importance and is currently trying to raise £500,000 to unlock a £3.7 million Lottery grant for its restoration.

Three things about Earls Court
Why did Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, Paul Simon and, more recently, Adele, Laura Marling and Ed Sheeran visit Earls Court’s Old Brompton Road?
They have all performed at the Troubadour in the Old Brompton Road, the last remaining survivor of the Fifties coffee house revival when a cappuccino was called a frothy coffee.

Why does Earls Court have cause to remember the Danzig Corridor and Kangaroo Valley?
After the Second World War, a large number of Poles came to live in Earls Court and the area became known as the Danzig Corridor. Then in the Sixties it was popular with Australians and New Zealanders living in London and became known as Kangaroo Valley.

What did Sir John Betjeman call “Nouveau Viking”?
St Cuthbert’s Church in Philbeach Gardens is now a Grade II-listed building; it was built between 1884 and 1887 and designed by the architect Hugh Roumieu Gough. The interior was richly decorated by various artists up until the Thirties. Sir John Betjeman coined the phrase to describe this extraordinary interior, one of the finest examples of the Arts and Crafts style in London.

Schools

Primary
Earls Court and the surrounding area has two primary schools and two comprehensive schools that are rated “outstanding” by the Government’s education watchdog Ofsted: St Barnabas and St Philip’s CofE in Earls Court Road and Bousfield in South Bolton Gardens and the London Oratory (boys, ages seven to 11 for The Oratory choir school and boys, ages 11 to 18) in Seagrave Road and Holland Park (co-ed, ages 11 to 18) in Airlie Gardens. Fulham Boys School CofE (boys, ages 11 to 18) in Mund Street is a new free school that opened in September last year.

Private
There are many private schools, too. The pre-preparatory, and preparatory schools are: Holland Park Pre-Prep and Day Nursery School (co-ed, from birth to six) in Holland Road; Thomas’s Kensington (co-ed, ages four to 11) in Cottesmore Gardens; St Philip’s School (boys, ages seven to 13) a Catholic school in Wetherby Place; Falkner House (girls, ages two to 11) in Brechin Place; Redcliffe School (co-ed, ages three to 11) in Redcliffe Gardens; Eaton House — the Vale (co-ed, ages three to eight) in Elvaston Place; St James’ Junior School (co-ed, ages four to 11) in Wetherby Place.

Secondary
The all-through and secondary schools are: Collingham (co-ed, ages 13 to 19) in Collingham Gardens, a GCSE and sixth form college; St James’ Senior Girls’ School (ages 10 to 18) in Earsby Street and Queen’s Gate (girls, ages four to 18) in Queen’s Gate.

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