High impact

Perched atop Highgate Hill, Cromwell Avenue is surely the most elegant of eyries. There’s a wistful wonder to this part of the city, the wilderness of Hampstead Heath, the mossy tombs of Highgate cemetery, and the tall, imposing houses gazing down onto the grey pavements below.

Here is the London of books and poetry, of memories and ghosts. Clatter up the stairs where the eaves look out over roofs and leaves, throw open the windows, and dream.

Highbrow

Our hostess, like her home, is the quintessence of subtle refinement. An opera-loving architect who’s spent her career manifesting the ambitions of others, a few years ago, here at her home in Cromwell Avenue she decided to realise her own ambitions. She indulged her passion for preserving the best of Victorian architecture – she quite literally wrote the book on it – and Cromwell Avenue is her masterpiece.

High spec

Here is a home that combines light and space with attention to detail. Victoriana is a word redolent of clutter, but our hostess has chosen carefully, keeping the most beautiful of this home’s original features (those with keen eyes will enjoy hunting down the finer of the original detailing) and sweeping away extraneous flourishes in favour of modern simplicity.

This house is design perfected: it is, also, very much a home. A large luxury kitchen and sun room look out over a well established garden. A comfortable sitting room has original cornicing and some of the loveliest antique furniture we’ve seen all framed by hauntingly beautiful modern art.

Head upstairs to find three fully equipped bathrooms, serving 2 bedrooms, two of them double. A fourth bedroom for the children with wrought iron beds a room which might have come straight from Peter Pan, is available. Remember to pack the fairy dust.

High ground

With an abundance of small independent cafes, restaurants, boutiques and book shops, Highgate is a London village deserving of the name.

From brooding types who take their leather-bound notebooks to write poetry in Highgate cemetery, to the families who romp with their Labradors out on nearby Hampstead Heath, Highgate is a calm, green corner of the city where the air is just that little bit more pure. And once you’re ready to descend back into the centre, the concrete jungle is only a few tube stops away.