THE ART OF HOUSE BUYING

Chelsea’s houses on the banks of the River Thames attracted clusters of artists in the 19th century. William Turner was mesmerised by the light and the changing state of the tide and lived here quietly with his mistress until he died in 1851. By then the Pre-Raphaelites had discovered it. Holman Hunt, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and their circle gave it notoriety. James McNeill Whistler and John Singer Sargent moved in by the turn of the 20th century, adding to the plethora of blue plaques. Today the Chelsea Arts Club, set up by Whistler in 1891, is still loved for its rackety atmosphere by artists, poets, writers, dancers, actor and musicians. Money poured in during the Sixties, when the Kings Road was the centre of Swinging London, and since then the property market has become prime. A three-bedroom house in Markham Street, just off the Kings Road, which would have sold for £18,000 in the Sixties, is now selling through Cluttons (020 7584 1771) for £2.95m. The artists’ studios of the 19th century, hidden behind the grand stucco-fronted villas of the Boltons conservation area, are being restored and sold as pieds-à-terre with a hotel finish. At Bolton Studios Savills (020 7578 9000) is selling one and two-bedroom flats in what it calls London’s “original bohemian quarter” with prices starting at £1.265m. Nearby, the Saatchi Gallery shows the new young artists’ work and the Bibendum Oyster Bar serves up plates of seafood and champagne. The whole of east London now offers refuge to artists who cannot afford their old west London haunts. When did it start? Some would say it was in the late Eighties when Damien Hirst, then a student at Goldsmith’s College in New Cross, held the first Frieze exhibition in the disused Port of London Authority building at Surrey Docks. Charles Saatchi came along and the group known as Young British Artists was launched. Hoxton emerged in the Nineties as a hitherto neglected area with an interesting past, a sense of place and lower prices, and so it became a new creative quarter on the edge of the City. Prices have soared and it is already gentrified with cafés and restaurants creating a Montmartre atmosphere in Hoxton Square, and hi-tech industries moving in around City Road. Developers trade on the art dividend. In the aptly named Gainsborough Studios West, a stylish modern building designed by Munkenbeck and Marshall on the site of the former Gainsborough Film Studios (Hitchcock’s The Lady Vanishes was made here in 1938), Savills (020 7226 1313) is selling a huge three-floor apartment with six outside terraces and grandstand views of the London skyline at £2.5m. Those who can no longer afford Hoxton or Shoreditch have moved to Bow. According to the Bow Arts Trust, the area has the largest number of artists and arts organisations living and working together of any capital city in the world. Bow Arts runs The Nunnery in Bow, where studios can be rented and the Open Studios weekend now involves 400 artists. New flats built by Telford in the Fielder Apartments at Bow Trinity have sold quickly but there is a one-bedroom apartment left at £360,000 (sales 020 3538 3457). Peckham is now the place to be in south London. Camberwell College of Arts (alumni include fashion designer Jeff Banks, Turner Prize winner Howard Hodgkin and film director Mike Leigh) exudes an arty buzz. Enterprising artists such as Jo Dennis and Dido Hallett have set up a not-for-profit arts venue in Caroline Gardens Chapel where film and art-makers can show their work. “There are now edgy art galleries such as the South London Gallery, pretty streets of Georgian houses and quirky pop-ups like Frank’s Café at the top of a multi-storey car park,” says Robin Chatwin of Savills. But serious house-buyers are here too. “It has felt the overspill from Dulwich and Peckham Rye and is now popular with first-time buyers and young families looking for better value,” he says. Artist Pascale Jordan is selling