Canonbury Square is a quiet residential street within a short walk of the shops and restaurants on Upper Street. It has outstanding transport links: Highbury & Islington provides quick access to the West End via the Victoria Line and citywide via London Overground. Essex Road station is two stops from the City at Moorgate, and Canonbury station offers direct services to Canada Water. Near to the apartment is the New River, a tranquil man-made waterway with mature trees that provides lovely walks. Highbury Fields nearby has large areas of open space, as well as tennis courts, a playground, and a swimming pool.
Accommodation comprises:
Reception room (with two ceiling height sash windows and corresponding ornamental wrought iron balconies, original wooden shutters, a working fireplace (gas) with marble mantel surround and slate hearth); Kitchen (bespoke fitted with range of white base and wall units, white metro tile splash-back, integrated fridge, integrated dishwasher. Utility cupboard housing a washing machine and a separate dryer. Sash window with lovely view over rear communal garden. Master bedroom (with two ceiling height sash windows and corresponding ornamental wrought iron balconies, original wooden shutters, a working fireplace (gas) with marble mantel surround and slate hearth). Bedroom 2 (a medium sized double bedroom with sash window and rear views over communal gardens); Shower room (a white suite which features a shower cubicle with chrome Lefroy Brooks fittings, WC, wash hand basin and mirrored medicine cabinet. Views over rear communal gardens).
Service charge: Approx. £1917.38 per annum
Ground rent: £300 per annum
Tenure: Long leasehold (circa 119 years remaining TBC)
Asking price: Guide price £1,150,000 subject to contract
Agent's note on the provenance of the apartment:
From the mid-1940s until 1952 the flat two flights of stairs up from rear garden entrance level at 26 Canonbury Square (then called 26a Canonbury Square and variously termed as being on the first or second floors*) was lived in by Anne Olivier Popham (later Bell; 1916-2018), who was working at the time first as the only female member of the so-called Monuments Men in post-war Germany (commemorated in George Clooney’s 2014 film) and later for the Arts Council. In 1945 she received - and rejected - an unexpected proposal of marriage from her neighbour George Orwell, recently widowed and then living with his young son Richard at 27b Canonbury Square. (Olivier described Orwell’s flat to James Beechey, a contributing author of 'The art of Bloomsbury' as being on the floor directly below hers.)
In 1952 Olivier married the art historian and writer Quentin Bell, the younger son of Clive and Vanessa Bell, and moved with him to Newcastle, where he was then teaching. (Quentin would later write the authorised biography of his aunt, Virginia Woolf, and Olivier subsequently edited the five volumes of Woolf’s diary.) Her mother-in-law Vanessa and Duncan Grant moved into 26a Canonbury Square in October 1952 and it remained their London address until the summer of 1955. Grant, in particular, made a number of paintings there (including several nudes of his friend Paul Roche) and occasional meetings of the Bloomsbury group’s Memoir Club were also held in Canonbury Square.
The 2016 article in The Guardian on Olivier Bell, mentions the Canonbury Square flat.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/jun/11/anne-olivier-bell-last-survivor-bloomsbury-set
*26 Canonbury Square is accessed from a gate entrance on Alwyne Villas. Access to the apartment is from the garden level at the back of the building. From this point there are two flights of stairs, which takes you to what is the corresponding first floor when viewing the property from the front.
