Orchard Close, Honor Oak Park, London SE3
Seventies terraced bungalow
Architect: Unknown
Year built: Late 1970s

I wasn’t sure what to expect when I turned up to view this bungalow in Honor Oak Park. My hopes weren’t especially high: the estate agent’s photos were rubbish to the extent that it was impossible to tell what the bungalow looked like from the outside, it didn’t look like there was a lot of space judging from the floor plan and I knew nothing about the area. However, the blurb’s description of an “open plan living area with a vaulted ceiling” and the idea of owning a freehold property in London for under £500,000 was enough of an incentive to go and take a look.

First impressions were mixed. The area seemed pleasant enough and there was a leafy park just across the road from property. Contrary to expectations, the bungalow wasn’t a detached property and was instead part of an unusual terrace of bungalows, all joined up in a slightly higgledy-piggledy manner. The triangular pitched roofs gave the development a jagged silhouette that wasn’t entirely pleasing to the eye.

The bungalow’s main entrance was a sliding patio-type door onto which a slightly makeshift-looking porch had been built. The sliding door opened straight onto the main living area, which was actually a pretty unusual and impressive space thanks to the vaulted ceiling and the amount of natural light coming in through the patio door and skylights. The rest of the property was more standard: two smallish bedrooms, an inoffensive but slightly dated bathroom and a small walled garden. A further exit next to the bathroom opened onto a narrow passage which ran alongside the whole length of the terrace, apparently for fire safety reasons.

I did like this property on the whole. I was quite taken by the main living area and the good decorative order overall was such that I could imagine moving straight in with all of my things without even needing to paint a wall. However, rather typically, it had been snapped up by the time I’d even thought about a second viewing.

Apologies for the appalling image quality in this post – my expectations were clearly so low that I didn’t even bother to bring my proper camera along to the viewing.