Islington time capsule house: Georgian property has been in the same family for 100 years and is now for sale for £2.25m

The owner was born in the house in 1929 and bought it from his aunt for £1,000 in the Fifties. 
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A house lived in by generations of the same family for more than a century has gone on sale in a sought-after street in Islington.

The four-bedroom Georgian property is on Malvern Terrace, a picturesque cobbled street of only 11 homes in the Barnsbury conservation area, where former Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre once lived around the corner from ex-Labour leader Tony Blair.

Ernest Smith was born in 1929 in the house that’s now for sale and lived there until he died this year.

He bought it from his aunt in the Fifties for about £1,000. His wife has now put it on the market with Savills Islington for £2.25 million.

The couple’s son, John Smith, who was born in 1958 and was brought up in the four-bedroom house with his four younger siblings, said: “My father bought the leasehold from his aunt for roughly £400 in 1952 and then bought the freehold from the Thornhill Estate for about the same sum a few years later.”

John’s grandparents remained living on the top floor of the house, while the young family lived on the ground floor.

Ernest, who worked for aircraft engineering company Handley Page, made several improvements to the house, including building an extension for an inside lavatory in the Sixties, adding a bathroom, and lintels to the upstairs windows.

“These were the days before it was listed so you could get away with stuff,” said John.

The family had no home telephone installed when John was young and had to use the public phone box in Richmond Avenue.

“I always think of my parents as the last bastions of the working class in Barnsbury,” said John. “Their contemporaries all moved out to the new towns and garden cities like Letchworth and Harlow in the Sixties and Seventies and new people moved in, but my father had a great attachment to the house and never wanted to move, even as Islington changed.

“When I was growing up there were probably only about five or six restaurants along Upper Street, all the way from Highbury to the Angel. Now there are hundreds.”

Aside from Ernest’s general home improvements, the house has barely changed in the ensuing decades and was Grade II listed 25 years ago, with some original features from when it was first built, including Georgian fireplaces.

Ernest boxed in the original banisters but his son believes they are also still there underneath the boarding.

"My parents decorated and kept it clean and tidy but it's very different to the other houses down the terrace, it's certainly not Farrow and Ball. There's a chance for someone to put their own stamp on a house in this area," said John.

The house is “an extremely exciting proposition,” according to Adam Smith of Savills Islington.

“This is an incredible opportunity to make your mark on a home available for the first time in over 100 years,” he said.

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