This wonderful Victorian house is located just off the ever-popular Chatsworth Road in Clapton Park, brilliantly positioned for the countless amenities and green spaces in the area. Beautifully designed and recently renovated to an exacting standard, the house is set over three light-filled levels with four bedrooms, has a generous cellar with utility area, and extends to almost 2,000 sq ft internally. Additionally, a glorious and newly landscaped south-facing garden at the rear is planted in a traditional English manner, complementing the interior design perfectly.
We’ve written about life here in more depth.
Setting the Scene
Glenarm Road was built in the 1870s. The area was formerly part of the Hackney House estate and, before that, market gardens to accommodate the then-growing population of East London. Neighbouring Chatsworth Road was initially built as the ‘spine’ of Clapton Park, with the west end of Glenarm Road laid out and constructed first in the 1860s, and the section east of Chatsworth Road where this house lies, in the 1870s.
Today the area has been wonderfully rejuvenated, with many independent shops and eateries located all along Chatsworth Road and neighbouring Lower Clapton Road. The borough of Hackney is famed as the greenest borough in London, with plenty of choice of local parks both in the immediate and greater area. For more information, see the History section.
The Grand Tour
Positioned on the south side of Glenarm Road, this home is set behind a low wall and Buxus hedging. It is built from London stock brick with stucco dressings painted lead grey in the traditional Victorian manner. The roundhead entrance porch has a slim architrave resting above decorative corbels. This leads to the original four-panel front door, with a generous transom light above, which opens to the private hallway with original pitch pine floorboards. Here, walls are painted in Paper & Paint Library’s beautiful ‘Stone II’, and a clear vista extends to the kitchen and garden beyond.
The main living space is positioned at the front of the plan, where a canted bay houses box sash windows, and an open hearth is a home to a wood burner. The elevations have elegant fine mouldings, which lend a sense of depth to the room and there are built-in cupboards in the alcoves. The rear of this space has a generous wall of shelving and acts as an ancillary study area; this leads to the kitchen and dining area, set one step below. Recently extended and completely redesigned, the spacious kitchen and dining area are defined by the incredible quality of light, care of an expansive mono-pitch roof and French windows, with an additional large picture window to the rear framing the verdant garden.
The dining area is set below the pitched roof, inset with four large glass apertures. There is a separate cosy seating area with a built-in bench beside the picture window. Engineered and untreated pale oak floorboards run underfoot. The kitchen has been skilfully designed to incorporate a long freestanding island unit in the centre of the space, with pale quartz worksurfaces resting atop deep drawers featuring traditional brass ironmongery. Further cupboards run along the wall and encompass a butler sink and stainless steel Rangemaster stove with electric induction hobs. Two open shelves built from planes of oak rest above and are home to china and glassware. There is a separate larder at the rear of the room, while a spacious laundry and utility room is set beneath the hallway in the cellar.
The first floor is home to the principal bedroom at the front of the plan; built-in wardrobing creates extra storage, and there is an en suite bathroom with separate shower area. A single bedroom is adjacent, while a third bedroom is positioned to the rear of this floor. This bedroom can easily accommodates a double bed if required. All the bedrooms have further elegant fine mouldings that decorate the elevations. The house’s main bathroom is positioned between both these bedrooms.
At the apex of the house is an incredibly bright and spacious fourth bedroom, with a large skylight set into the roof’s pitch and a sash window set into the rear dormer with brilliant views of the Olympic park at Stratford and beyond. Wonderfully peaceful, it has its own en suite shower room featuring Zellige tiles that lend a hammam-like quality to the space. Additionally, there is further excellent storage set in the eaves all around the bedroom.
The Great Outdoors
French windows to the rear of the house open to a wide-set stone terrace, which forms an additional seating area in the warmer month. From here, steps lead up to a lawned area surrounded by roses, geraniums, anemones, gladioli, jasmine and poppies with sorel, chives and rosemary providing kitchen essentials. In the summer months, blackberry and gooseberry bushes bear fruit. South-facing, the garden catches the very best sunlight throughout the entire day.
Out and About
Glenarm Road is just north of Homerton and close to the green fields of both Hackney and Leyton Marshes. Several parks are also nearby, including the much-loved Daubeney Fields, Millfields Park and the 200-acre, Grade II*-listed Victoria Park.
Adjacent Chatsworth Road offers a lively gauntlet of independent shops, cafes and restaurants, such as Shane’s and Jim’s Cafe, and specialist food suppliers L’epicerie and Organico. P.Franco, Charles Artisan Bread and My Neighbours The Dumplings are also located near Lower Clapton Road. There is an excellent Sunday market and several good pubs in the area, including The Elderfield, Adam & Eve and The Spread Eagle, London’s first vegan pub. Victoria Park village and London Fields with its Broadway Market are also nearby.
The choice of local schools is excellent, with several very good state primary schools nearby and the independent Gatehouse School just south at Victoria Park. There is a choice of senior state schools within walking distance, including the much-lauded Mossbourne Community Academy, with further independent schools a short train ride away on the North London line from Hackney Central, including Northbridge House’s Senior Canonbury school.
Glenarm Road is a short walk from Homerton station and a fifteen-minute walk to Hackney Central and Hackney Downs stations, offering overground lines to Stratford, Highbury & Islington and Liverpool Street.
Council Tax Band: D
History
Much of the land in Clapton was originally part of the estate of Hackney House, which was built between 1728 and 32 for Stamp Brooksbank, who was later to become governor of the Bank of England. The grandest residence of its kind in the area, Hackney House stood roughly where the northwest corner of Homerton University Hospital is now.
In the 1860s, The London and Suburban Land and Building Company invented the Clapton Park name for an estate mainly laid on land that had been part of the Hackney House estate, hitherto occupied by market gardens and watercress beds. London & Suburban began by laying out Chatsworth Road along a field path from Brooksby’s Walk to Pond Lane (now Millfields Road). It then filled the space between that and Lower Clapton Road with Clifden, Glenarm, and the other neighbouring roads.
From the outset, the main shopping street was Chatsworth. Other amenities and businesses followed, including the short-lived Clapton Park Theatre, which opened on Glenarm Road in 1875, and the Tower brewery on Ashenden Road, which later became a sack factory. By the late 1880s, Clapton Park’s dense network of terraced streets stretched across to the Hackney Cut. (A remnant of Hackney Marsh was preserved as a recreation ground, which has since been reduced to an eleven-acre park called Daubeney Fields)
The beautifully preserved Grade II*-listed Clapton Park Chapel, known locally as the Round Chapel, was built in 1871. It was one of the most important non-conformist chapels in east London, accommodating the rapidly growing local congregation – it is now an art and community centre.
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