Sophie Heawood's Property Binge.

 What I love about London property prices is when they say, “Needs a bit of work, eight million pounds please.” Although what I also love about this house, The Garden House on Frognal Lane in Hampstead, is that it doesn’t need any work whatsoever, if you ask me. Yes it’s dusty and yellowing and tired, but so am I, so is everything that is good This place looks like some of the Hampstead literati lived in it, it has that dying whiff of intelligentsia about it. The death rattle of the BBC in its 1960s or perhaps 70s heyday, of the Play for Today, of bookishness as sex appeal, of sitting in a hardbacked chair beside the fire and discussing the problem with Harold Wilson. There are shelves full of wonky old box files, from back when guilt lurked on pieces of paper and not the screen you are currently staring at. Back when the guilty things played a longer game of haunting you.

Judging by the sitting room ceiling, someone spent 40 years smoking in there and the last eight years only wanting to, after the doctor told them to stop. It is a room the colour of tobacco and a second divorce; it speaks of the quiet impossibility of marriage in a world that also contains philosophical argument. And perhaps breasts. This is a room that watched Joan Bakewell interviewing Harold Pinter on the telly and knew full well they were having an affair.if you find this to be a sexless house, look, just look, at that wild conservatory! Personally, this is the way I want to go out. With the vibe of this mad conservatory room. With swathes of silken parachute fabric billowing down from the ceiling, to remind me that sex is not dead, even if I am. 

Why do I feel like I’ve already seen a Tim Burton film set in this garden, with Johnny Depp popping out from behind the topiary? Actually some of that topiary looks somewhat real, like people might be hiding inside it, dressed in leaves. Do these hedges conceal men? Is this where Johnny Depp’s been hiding? 

Anyway would you get a look at this castle, which is not far from St Andrews, if your kink is thinking about Prince William getting the horn for Kate Middleton when she walked in her undies at a student fashion show. (And if that is your kink, poor you, help is available.)  There’s no point looking at the floorpan because I can tell you now how far that dining room stretches and it’s not 50 feet, it’s right into eternity. Then there’s the sitting room with swords on the wall, ready to do battle with the candelabra.  Then there’s the bedrooms! The colours! The old old beds! The spirits of all the dead trees used to make all of that wood, so much wood! And all of my dead heart! I sigh for this castle. I wish it well in its journey into my dreamlands. Maybe a few nightmares too. Depends if the topiary stops moving when I look at it.