Ling’s Coppice, Dulwich SE23
1960s terraced house with atrium
Architect: Austin Vernon and Partners
Year built: 1968

I’ve always admired Ling’s Coppice, a neat-looking 1960s housing estate in Dulwich made up of two-storey terraced houses notable for having double-height atrium-style dining areas (leading to them being locally referred to as “the atrium houses”).

Forming part of the Dulwich Estate, the houses were built in 1968 by Austin Vernon and Partners in U-shaped terraces with gardens that opened onto communal landscaped amenity areas. Though a little outside of the price range we had originally envisioned, we decided to take a look at a particularly nice example of a house on the estate that had recently been reduced in price.

Though I’d passed Ling’s Coppice many times on the bus, I’d never had the opportunity to have a wander around the estate properly. It was as nice as I’d expected – rows of immaculately kept houses and neatly trimmed retro-looking shrubs.

The interior of the house that we viewed was, in short, spectacular. The entrance hall led straight into the double height dining area, which was flooded with light from a large square skylight overhead and overlooked by an upper-floor gallery. This led through to a living area, which opened out onto a small but well tended garden, and an open sided staircase. The current owners had converted the garage into a storage room and a substantial utility room (in my view, the ultimate indulgence).

The upstairs was no less attractive, the upstairs gallery looking out over the dining area and branching off into two bedrooms on one side and a further bedroom and the bathroom on the other (the original layout had four bedrooms and a small bathroom but the current owners had traded the fourth, smallest bedroom for a more substantial bathroom, a worthy trade-off in my opinion).

I was quite taken with this house, far more so than with any of the other properties I’d seen as part of my long running search (the only other property having the same effect on me was an Austin Vernon and Partners flat that I tried to buy about two years ago). This, however, was reflected in the price of the house, which I’m sure would be enough to buy a small mansion in Sutton.

We haven’t ruled out this house but have decided to keep looking at properties at the same price point to see what we can get if we are willing to stretch our budget to the absolute maximum.