Property of the week: This West End flat gets you a pass to one of Mayfair’s secret gardens
Where luxury homes are concerned, Mayfair pretty much has it all. A quick scan of current property listings reveals homes complete with built-in pizza ovens, spa treatment rooms and their own chauffeur-driven Bentleys.
There is one area where most of its premium pads fall short, though – access to a garden. Not a roof terrace, not a balcony, but a proper patch of grass.
But now there is a rare chance to buy a home with its own back yard, in a block with access to one of Mayfair’s three ‘secret’ gardens.
Nestled just behind Park Lane, Warburton House is a red-brick neo-Georgian mansion which was redeveloped in the early 2000s to provide seven luxury apartments – one of which has just come on the market with Wetherell for £4.5m. It is located on Dunraven Street: one of four streets which back on to the private Green Street Garden.
The square includes lawns, fountains, a lily pond and even its own resident ducks. Because it is bounded by homes on all sides, it offers a level of seclusion that you might not expect a stone’s throw from the madding crowd of Oxford Street.
Green Street is one of just three secret gardens in Mayfair, the others being at South Street and Culross Street. The buyer will have to share it with 75 other residents, but compared to nearby Hyde Park it is still very much a relaxing oasis.
The 1,795 sq ft, three-bed property at Warburton House is accessed by a private lift. Its double reception room overlooks the gardens, and two of its three bedrooms have an ensuite bathroom. It also has a utility room, and if the garden wasn’t enough, benefits from its own 330 sqft roof terrace.
Built for a wealthy couple in the early 1900s, it was used from 1917 to 1919 as a military hospital called The Garland Home, which had beds for 36 wounded soldiers from the Great War.
Later it was occupied by Sir Eric Hambro, part of the Hambro merchant banking dynasty and a former Conservative politician, and it has also been used as office space.
Peter Wetherell, chief executive of Wetherell, says: “If you are walking in Mayfair, you would never know that behind these grand buildings there lies a secret garden. Given the location and exclusive access to the gardens, we anticipate very high demand for this exquisite property.”