Does anybody know anything about The Bishops Avenue, London, N2?

Question

I am aware it is very exclusive and wealthy, but is it true the top end of the road isn't considered to have the same prestige as the bottom end?

What do the locals think of the road?

Answer 1

Even if I won the lottery I wouldn't consider living there.  Who wants to live in an over-priced gaudy mansion on a very busy main road?

Answer 2

What would you like to know? The Bishops Avenue -- or at least the section running up from the A1 to the Heath, is a mixture of huge mansions and (set back from the road, in the closes that spur off it) super-luxury apartments. There's nothing like  it anywhere else in the UK -- in fact the place it reminds me of most is Bellevue Avenue in Rhode Island.  

It dates back about 120 years, so it's not an old road by London standards.

In January this year, just one property on the Bishops Avenue -- Toprak Mansion -- netted £41 million. It was sold to Hourieh Peramaa, a billionairess born in the former Soviet state of Kazakhstan.

She's taking the typical 'Bishops Avenue' approach to her purchase: she's had the name 'Toprak Mansion' chipped away and replaced with the name 'Royal Mansion' -- and is planning a further £30 million worth of work to bring the property up to scratch.

'Summer Palace', the next-door house, belongs to Lakshmi Mittal, and now that's gone on the market for £40 million. So that gives you an idea of what the real mansion-sized houses on the Bishops Avenue go for.

The odd thing is that because of the enormous size of the properties, it's not London's most expensive street in terms of £ per sq foot. That honour goes to Kensington Palace Gardens, where prices can reach up to £5,000 per square foot (I believe Mr Mittal is buying his next place there.) The Bishops Avenue is less than half that -- around £2,000 per foot.



Walk down it and you'll find It's a weird place -- I've known it for 25 years (from bedsit days in Hampstead) and many of the houses never seem to get lived in. They're second (or third, or fourth!) homes for the hyper-super-rich, and they just cycle from one owner to the next, being rebuilt -- or at least gutted and redesigned -- every time. Their style is the kind of opulence that is totally over-the-top.

Different rules apply for the section of the Bishops Avenue on the East Finchley side of the A1: it only amounts to about a quarter of the road's length, and the houses along that stretch are basically just large family houses, not exceptional at all.

Edit: I've found you a nice link to the story of the sale of Toprak Mansion, with a video clip. Here: http://property.timesonline.co.uk/tol/li...

Well, I hope that's satisfied your curiosity. =D

Love from a Londoner born and bred.

Answer 3

no, but google it.

Answer 4

Depends what you mean by the bottom end. It crosses the A1, and the part on the East Finchley side is much less expensive (relatively speaking - still out of almost everyone's price range) than the part on the Hampstead side.

But if you're just talking about the part on the Hampstead side itself, I'm not sure there's much difference between the top and bottom end.

The locals are all loaded anyway, even if they're not quite at that level, so they probably don't mind the excesses that go on there.