The guardian angels
Fancy renting for half the price? There are some intriguing properties going for a song
My LIVING conditions were Dickensian. Whenever someone starts a sentence like that, you know they are dealing in hyperboles.
But there is one sub- sector of the housing market that does still evoke the Victorian boarding house: strangers living cheek-by-jowl in conditions that would make others blanch.
And the rest of us are getting a glimpse of it in the new Monday night Channel 4 sitcom Crashing, set in a shabby disused hospital. The main characters are ‘property guardians’, a grand-sounding title for people whom one might also describe as licensed squatters.
They live in properties that are temporarily empty, for whatever reason, and make sure they are not vandalised or allowed to fall into disrepair. They pay rent for the privilege, but at substantially below-market rates.
When the arrangement works well, both the owner of the property and its guardians benefit. A place that’s empty for long periods is a blight on a neighbourhood. But if it can be looked after, while offering much-needed affordable accommodation, two birds have been killed with one stone.
Katharine Hibbert, who set up her property guardians company,
dotdotdotproperty.com, in 2011, says that, although aspects of Crashing are unrealistic, it also faithfully captures the ethos of this esoteric lifestyle.
‘Real property guardians would not be allowed to smoke or hold wild parties, as their core job is to look after the properties.’
She has 500- odd guardians on her books, of whom a large number are graduates, looking for cheap accommodation in London at the start of their careers.
‘With us, they can get a one-bedroom flat in central London for £500 a month, which would be unimaginable in the private rented sector, where they might have to pay three times as much.’
If a picture is being formed of educated layabouts living in squalor while they spend all their money in the pub, nothing could be further from the truth. The guardians employed by dotdotdot
property.com, a social enterprise as well as a commercial one, are expected to spend at least 16 hours a month volunteering in their communities.
‘We are only interested in people who have that kind of commitment to building strong communities,’ says Hibbert. ‘ Our guardians volunteer at everything from care homes to city farms. One of them even volunteers with the RNLI on the River Thames.’
Sam Martin, a guardian on the Thamesmead estate in Greenwich, south-east London, has run a literary project for pre- school children and is now a climate change campaigner. He pays £200 a month for his onebedroom apartment and, although the accommodation is hardly luxurious, is relishing the lifestyle.
‘I have made friends on the estate and I like the fact that we are expected to be guardians of these flats,’ he says.
Not everyone would make a suitable property guardian. Families with children are ineligible. Those with pets ditto. And the fact that you can be turfed out of a property with 28 days’ notice, less than in the private rented sector, is an obvious downside.
But you can see why the combination of super-low rents and an unconventional lifestyle appeals to the young and young at heart.
As for the type of properties that require guardians for a temporary period, there is a surprising variety, from pubs to vicarages to private homes. Often developers will buy several properties in an area, but have no immediate plans to develop them, which creates the need for a guardian.
If you have been tickled by Crashing, and fancy living in a hospital, there is a room in a Victorian one in Clitheroe, Lancashire, for £350 a month through Ad Hoc ( adhoc.co.uk), another specialist in this field.
The same company is offering studio rooms in a community centre in East Finchley for £500 a month and rooms in a fire station in Northumberland for £200 a month. The property is crying out for a sitcom of its own, with chip-pans going up in flames and people sliding down firemen’s poles.
It would be far too eccentric a place of residence for most people, but for the intrepid minority, the chance to be a guardian is an intriguing wild card in the property game.
WHeN the 18-yearold Queen Victoria came to the throne in 1837, she was enchanted with her new home.
‘I rejoice to go into Buckingham Palace,’ she wrote, ‘my rooms are so high, pleasant and cheerful ... the garden is so large and very pretty.’ Alas, her delight did not last.
The drains below the fashionable, new, indoor water closets did not drain and Londoners were in the habit of dumping their rubbish against the palace walls. The chimneys belched smoke and the servants’ passages were so maze-like that hot water for baths was cold by the time it reached the royal rooms.
Victoria’s courtiers complained bitterly. Her dresser Frieda Arnold wrote that she had ‘never been so cold in my whole life as I was for two days at the palace’.
Prince Albert took matters in hand, building nurseries and a family chapel. But the couple still found their new home sooty, chilly and cramped. Frieda called the atmosphere ‘ tomb-like’. Anyone looking at the palace today may find this incredible. Cramped? Chilly? Tomb-like? The rooms are splendid.
Victoria moved to the Isle of Wight to escape her prying subjects. our modern royal family have invited us in with a virtual through-the-keyhole tour.
The Royal Collection Trust, the charity that manages Buckingham Palace, has worked with Google to film a 360-degree tour of seven state rooms.
You start in the Grand entrance, climb the Grand Staircase, then enter the Green Drawing Room, the Throne Room, the Picture Gallery and the Ballroom.
The architect responsible for these sumptuous interiors was John Nash, who was engaged by George IV in 1822 to remodel what the king considered a rather modest ‘pied-à-terre’ into a palace fit for his court.
GeoRGe had high ambitions. He once boasted that he wanted to ‘quite eclipse Napoleon,’ who had been magnificently remodelling much of Paris.
If the rooms on the Google tour look unpatriotically French with their rococo mouldings, swagged curtains and mirrored doors, it’s because Nash was under orders to out-Napoleon Napoleon.
Mirrored doors and walls are a clever way of making a modest room more palatial. Mirror Works ( antique mirrorglass.com) take on commissions for wardrobes, halls and bathrooms.
For acanthus leaf carvings of the sort Nash installed at the palace, try Andy Thornton ( from £ 49,
andythornton.com). Nash had flair, but no talent for managing a budget. Parliament had agreed to refurbishing costs of £150,000, but George talked them up to £450,000. In the end, they exceeded £500,000.
A Parliamentary Select Committee accused Nash of ‘ inexcusable irregularity and great negligence’ in the keeping of accounts.
Designers Guild has a smart set of wallpapers and fabrics inspired by the palace. Its linen toile de jouy Buckingham House is based on an engraving of the facade. The upholstery fabric Royal Promenade is printed with lithograph reproductions of Queen Victoria, Albert and her children on horseback ( designersguild.com).
Zoffany’s damask wallpapers such as Crivelli and Tours capture something of the look of the Green Drawing Room. Swoon editions has a sofa — The Laurence (£799) — like the ones that line the Picture Gallery. Many of the Queen’s rugs are Axminsters.
Sevres porcelain, marble mantelpieces and gilded picture frames may be the stuff of when-I- marry- a-Prince fantasy, but the richness of colour at the palace, from the scarlet curtains to the yellow silk chairs would warm any home.
Borrow John Nash’s opulent use of royal colours and fabrics, but keep an eye, as he so lamentably failed to do, on the budget.