SMOOTH OPERATORS
Tired of endless train delays? Move close to a reliable line, says
GIVen the daily news, you’d think that getting to work on time by train was an impossible dream. not if you look outside the Southeast of england.
Which? has questioned 14,000 passengers and asked for their verdicts on rail operators’ punctuality, reliability, availability of seats, value for money, standing room and even the state of the loos.
The clear winner is Grand Central, which runs from King’s Cross to the north-east, but specialises in services through yorkshire. elsewhere, Merseyrail and Chiltern both rate highly. Worst rated (perhaps no surprise) is Southern Railway, which operates between London and the South Coast and which has seen widespread strike action.
Other London-focused commuter operators, such as Southeastern and Thameslink, are also near the bottom.
The Which? survey comes on the heels of analysis by property portal Zoopla showing homes in Ilkley in yorkshire and Bromsgrove in the Midlands — rail commuter hotspots for Leeds and Birmingham respectively — record above average price rises. So if you want to enjoy genuinely good rail services, where should you move to?
NORTHERN CHAMPION
Grand Central — which won top honours in autumn’s national Rail Passenger Survey as well as the Which? study — has given a boost to house prices in yorkshire and the northeast, which have both boomed far above most rival regions. Business consultancy PwC says yorkshire house price rises will outperform the national average this year with an increase of 3.5 per cent, followed by 2.7 per cent in 2019 before an average 3.4 per cent each year between 2020 and 2022. This would see the county’s average house price move to £182,000 in 2022 compared with £155,000 today.
you can get from halifax to Wakefield in under 35 minutes and from northallerton to york in 20. Doncaster to London King’s Cross is a shade under 100 minutes.
‘People ideally want to be no more than a 30-minute rail trip from Leeds, york and harrogate,’ says yorkshire buying agent Sally Perks.
MIGHTY MERSEY
MERSEYRAIL — which in September was voted Passenger Operator of the year in the national Rail Awards — carries 110,000 passengers each weekday from 68 stations over 75 miles of track, of which 6.5 miles are underground.
Birkenhead to Liverpool Central takes about 15 minutes — Preston to Liverpool is just under 75 minutes.
Liverpool’s house prices have been picking up speed, too. They’re up 25.2 per cent in the past five years, according to Zoopla, and average just over £173,000.
hometrack, a consultancy which monitors sales in the UK’s 20 largest cities, puts Liverpool at the top because average prices are up 7.5 per cent in the past year. Merseyside’s most popular upmarket areas for house buyers are Sefton, a coastal strip that includes Grand national venue Aintree and the Royal Birkdale Golf Club, and the Wirral, the leafy peninsula including Birkenhead and West Kirby with the River Mersey on one side and the River Dee on the other.
HOME COUNTIES’ LINKS
CHILTERN serves Birmingham, Oxford and London and many stations in between. It’s recently led to an increase in demand for homes in Banbury, from which trains into Marylebone are sometimes quicker than those from Oxford into Paddington.
high Wycombe to Oxford is about 40 minutes, Banbury to Marylebone is 70 minutes, while from Leamington Spa it’s only 30 minutes into Birmingham.
Meanwhile, there’s a new Oxford Parkway railway station north of the city, outside the congested ring road. That has made pretty but isolated villages more popular.
Other towns and villages have benefited. ‘Thame and the surrounding villages have increased in value considerably and caught up with towns or villages such as henley and Marlow, whose rail links are secondary in comparison,’ says James Shaw, of buying agency Prime Purchase.
Another village now on the map thanks to improved rail links is Islip, according to Charles Wellbelove of estate agency hamptons International.
‘It offers better value for money than north and central Oxford. It’s a pretty village with several pubs and a vibrant community plus a mainline station on the Chiltern line to Oxford Central, Bicester and Marylebone,’ he says, adding that some property values close to the station have risen as much as 20 per cent.
They say you have to look back to look forward. Which may explain the explosion of heritage prints being borrowed from British archives and splashed across everything from jumpsuits to curtains. Take the launch at h&M involving Morris & Co’s most iconic prints: Pimpernel, which was originally a wallpaper pattern hung in Morris’s own dining room, is on a blouse, jacket and trousers, while Snakeshead, one of Morris’s favourite chintzes, appears on a polo neck.
It’s not unusual for fashion to pilfer interior design ideas. Radley recently used Sanderson’s Roslyn vintage floral print, designed by William Turner in 1910, to adorn bags, backpacks and purses. While fashion brands such as The Vampire’s Wife and Anna Mason are the most recent to be inspired by Liberty of London’s floral prints.
But what G. P. & J. Baker didn’t expect, when its fashion collection with h&M sold out in July, was that it would bring a new audience to its interiors fabrics. ‘The G.P. & J. Baker prints used in the h&M collaboration are some of our most enduring designs,’ says Ann Grafton, MD and creative director of the 134-year-old textile company.
Founded by brothers George and James Baker in 1884 to import carpets from the Far east, they moved into textiles at the height of the Arts and Craft movement. Today, G.P. & J. Baker has one of the world’s largest privately owned textile archives.
PRINTS such as Oriental, Fretwork, hydrange a Bird, pictured right, and Shadow Fern proved so popular on dresses and jackets that a new generation has connected with the brand.
‘The G. P. & J. Baker archive reflects the maximalist mood for rich, highly patterned designs,’ says Grafton. Fabric is from £96 per metre, gpjbaker.com.
Although recoloured using contemporary shades, they are still true to the original designs.
‘We’ve seen a renewed appreciation for designs like these that are 100 years old, originally hand painted by artists and then hand block printed.
‘Seeing them in a completely new context has proved that great design will always endure,’ says Grafton. It’s been such a success that there will be a second drop of the collection in h&M stores on December 6. Another company drawing inspiration from the past is furniture maker Sofa Workshop.
Its collaboration with the V&A sees three new ranges — the Shaftesbury chair, Thurloe sofa, chair and stool and the Walpole sofa and footstool (from £599, sofaworkshop.com) — in six V&A fabrics.
‘The Love Birds fabric, with its Chinoiserie motifs, and Kaleidoscope, echoing Art Deco silhouettes, both feel right for now,’ says Megan holloway of Sofa Workshop.
All six fabrics, printed in Cheshire, have been lovingly recreated. ‘We’ve stayed close to the original fabrics during the design process,’ says holloway.
Today’s customers are interested in history. ‘They want fabrics with a sense of depth and intrigue. each one of these tells a story,’ she says.
At Liberty of London, rising design star Matilda Goad’s scallop raffia lampshades have been given a classic twist, trimmed and lined with Tana Lawn edenham, Thorpe or elysian fabrics (£ 160 each, libertylondon.com). ‘I think everyone has an attachment to a Liberty pattern,’ Goad says. ‘I was surrounded by them when I was growing up because my mother used to make Liberty print children’s smock dresses.’ Interior designer Kit Kemp’s folk tales-inspired fabric and wallpaper collaboration with Martin Waller, of Chelsea design emporium Andrew Martin, has taken a different historic turn. Working with illustrator Melissa White, designs such as the giant Mythical Land wallpaper, Wychwood and hedgerow (from £50 per metre for fabric, £60 per metre for wallpaper, andrewmartin.co.uk), used old tapestries, wall paintings and embroidery samplers for inspiration.