London’s crowning glories: how prime property has changed since the last coronation

“I wasn’t around in 1953!” quips Jonathan Hewlett, Chairman of The Private Office, when asked to compare prime property in London today and 70 years ago, at the time of Elizabeth II’s coronation. But Savills was – so we begin by considering which parts of the capital were “prime” back then. In 1953, the most desirable areas were “Mayfair, St James’s, Belgravia, Knightsbridge, Kensington and parts of Chelsea. SW10 and South Kensington would have been slightly edgy,” says Hewlett, using a word that in 1953 was just starting to acquire its current meaning. Notting Hill – where property today is so desirable – would have been off most buyers’ radar during this era, while Marylebone was yet to acquire the buzzy glamour we associate with it today.

London also looked very different 70 years ago. St Paul’s was still the tallest building in the city – so no starchitects’ skyscrapers, nor the residential towers that have sprung up lately everywhere from Vauxhall to Shoreditch. Instead, picture housing stock largely made up of Georgian and Victorian townhouses, as well as 20th-century mansion blocks – and, behind the bunting and flags, quite a few bombsites, like so many missing teeth on central streets and squares.

The Blitz was to blame for the damage, but Britain’s social structure had been changing throughout the 20th century – and, just as country-house living seemed past its heyday in 1953, so “no one could afford to run large houses in London”, says Hewlett. Even the lucky few who could were disinclined to live in the grand style of their forebears. Take the Dukes of Westminster, the Grosvenors, who then, as now, owned swathes of prime central London. In the 20th century, the family downsized three times: moving out of the palatial Grosvenor House on Park Lane, which was demolished in the 1920s to make way for the luxury hotel of that name; then to Bourdon House in Mayfair (now the home of Alfred’s, Dunhill’s private club); and finally to a terraced house on Eaton Square.

Many of the really grand aristocratic townhouses had been demolished before the Second World War, while after it “lots of houses were turned into multiple accommodation to sort out the housing crisis”, says Hewlett. Smart young bachelors were moving into mews houses that their grandparents’ chauffeurs and grooms would formerly have occupied, “and throughout Mayfair and Belgravia temporary office use was granted to deal with the shortage of space”. Now, however, the grand London townhouse is making a comeback. “Ultra-high-net-worth buyers want large houses to give them privacy,” Hewlett explains. “Some of those on Belgrave Square and Mayfair have become exceptional homes again.”

Elsewhere, behind the unchanging façade of many London terraces, expansive apartments have been carved out across two or even three townhouses for those who prefer lateral living. And many of today’s prime property buyers are opting for a kind of home not available back in 1953 – a discreet turnkey apartment in a branded residence such as The Knightsbridge, Twenty Grosvenor Square, 1 Grosvenor Square, The Peninsula or The OWO (still very much the War Office when the young Queen Elizabeth’s carriage passed by on her rather wet coronation day). “There were always grand mansion blocks,” says Hewlett, “but now buyers want extra facilities – a gym, pool, spa and cinema rooms.”

Further afield, Richmond and Wimbledon “have always had high-value family homes”, but today’s high-net-worth buyers might look to Wandsworth, Battersea, Chiswick or Islington – where gentrification began to take hold a decade or so into Elizabeth II’s reign, starting in leafy Barnsbury and Canonbury. There, as in parts of west London such as Notting Hill, the elegant, handsomely proportioned 19th-century housing stock would prove ripe for a high-end makeover – and today, says Hewlett, “many of what were previously multiple-occupancy houses are back as wonderful homes, with access to communal gardens”. But 70 years ago it would have required a bold imagination indeed to imagine wealthy Londoners opting to live in Hackney or Hoxton – which, as any older cabbie will tell you, was then the roughest part of the East End.

Still, if, in 1953, “edgy” was a cause for concern, today there are definitely high-end clients who choose to live in beautiful properties that benefit from the lively east London scene, says Liza-Jane Kelly, Savills head of London residential. That might be “a wealthy client looking for a beautiful family home in De Beauvoir or Victoria Park”, or “bankers, lawyers and creatives seeking a loft in Shoreditch”. Likewise, “there are wealthy older couples who’ve bought somewhere in the country, but want a pied-à-terre in Wapping, the South Bank or Clerkenwell”, where post-industrial chic is now the order of the day – a reminder that, for all the historic pageantry that comes with a coronation, London is constantly reinventing itself.

Pictures from top: The OWO; Workmen clearing the bomb site at Cannon Street, London in November 1953 (Getty); St Paul’s Cathedral hidden in with the modern London skyline (Getty); the OWO then and now (Getty); the colourful terraces in Notting Hill that look very different from the 1950s (Getty)