Assembly rooms

If you lust over costume dramas, if you long to take tea and cucumber sandwiches, to fill your dance card and perhaps indulge in a little illicit romance, then your destination must surely be Lennox Gardens. Furnished in the style of the high Regency, yet with every mod con, this is a home that puts even Pemberley to shame. Take a turn about your residents’ only gardens, or pick up a new bonnet in nearby Harrods.

For it is a truth universally acknowledged that a traveller in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a home. And here’s a home that’ll make you feel very fortunate indeed.

Lady of distinction

Your young hostess is from Italy and works in the world of publishing. Now a permanent resident in South Kensington, alongside her daughter and fluffy little dog, she keeps Lennox Gardens for visiting members of her extended family.

A merry waltz

Lennox Gardens is a home that suits both sense and sensibility. You’ll love the imposing façade, and the wide sweep of the staircase that ushers you up to the first floor. Once inside, you’ll find elaborate cornices, high ceilings and enormous windows, as well as an array of extraordinary antique furniture. The drawing room is almost palatial in its splendour, with oil paintings, a working fireplace and French doors that open out onto a charming balcony.

The lemon yellow dining room faces out onto an old stone church, while the moss green kitchen’s modern and well equipped. At the end of the corridor you’ll find a candy-striped double bedroom, its king sized bed topped off with a wickedly kitsch crown. There’s a sunny single bedroom next door, and a wood panelled family bathroom. Upstairs, the large master bedroom is papered in pretty toile de jouy, and, for your toilette, you’ve a marble bathroom, and even your own dressing area.

Grand tour

You’re five minutes’ walk from both Knightsbridge and Chelsea’s Sloane Square, so you can choose between Harrods and the glories of Hyde Park, and swinging King’s Road. Either way, you’re surrounded by London’s top restaurants, cafes and designer boutiques, or, if you’d rather investigate Mayfair and the West End, the tube or a cab can have you at Piccadilly Circus in less than ten minutes.