Ashfield Villa

The villa

Ashfield Villa is the fourth of eleven built along the east side of Highbury Fields in 1846, and the only one of the eleven never to have been divided into flats. That is the whole point of it. Four floors, six bedrooms, and a staircase that runs uninterrupted from the hall to the second landing.

The first two floors keep their original plaster cornices and both marble chimneypieces. The lower ground was tanked and rebuilt in 2016 and now holds the kitchen, a utility, and a room the current owners use for music. Four bathrooms, three of them added in that same programme of work.

Position

The Fields are across the road, which means thirty acres of grass and plane trees without crossing anything. Highbury and Islington is an eight-minute walk. The house faces west, so the front rooms get the evening and the garden gets the morning.