The village people

Britain's most expensive house went on sale in Kensington this week - for GBP 35 million. Sadly, not all our homes are worth quite so much, which means mischievous owners have to resort to imaginative methods to bump up the selling price. One technique, all the rage among the capital's estate agents, is to invent entirely new 'countryside' names for inner-city areas. After all, who'd live behind the Pentonville Road when they could reside in what local agents call (in all seriousness) 'Penton Village'?

ANDREW MARTIN went on a house seller's tour of the city to discover why so many Londoners are suddenly

Blythe Village Named after Blythe Road, W14, Blythe Village is conspicuous by its absence from my London Encyclopaedia. But according to Simon Barnes of Winkworth estate agents, the tradition of referring to this area of pretty, low-built houses as a village "goes back a long way". "How long?" I asked quite brutally. "Well," said Mr Barnes, "certainly for the last two or three years. And it really is a village; in fact the deli there is actually called 'The Village Delicatessen'." Mr Barnes seemed a very nice chap, so I was careful to avoid using the word "Olympia" during the course of our conversation. He would only have been upset. Penton Village The writer and GLR presenter Robert Elms was looking at houses around Claremont Square at the westerly end of Pentonville Road, when he was surprised to hear the estate agent refer to this area of large, but quite scruffy, Georgian properties as Penton Village. "The trouble is," one local estate agent told me, "people don't like saying King's Cross." Brackenbury Village According to David Platfoot of Royston estate agents, "Brackenbury Village is the area on either side of Brackenbury Road, W6. It has an extremely good reputation, and the houses round here really are very cottagey." So it's nothing to do with Hammersmith, then? Mr Platfoot left a long silence. "It is," he said, choosing his words carefully, "a particular sub-area of Hammersmith, yes." Crouch End Heights The term "Crouch End Heights" effortlessly implies not only a physical but a social superiority to the rest of Crouch End, and when I mentioned this to an estate agent called David of the local firm, Martyn Gerrard, he nodded. "Yeah," he said. "It sounds really good." Crouch End Heights is the area around Ridge Road, N8, and Mount View Road, N4. "They're big houses," said David, "with lovely views over London." I asked David whether the term Crouch End Heights was in wide general use locally? "Oh yes," he said, "it's in wide general use by estate agents." Highgate Slopes Highgate Village is a term with which only the churlish would quibble. Highgate certainly once was a village; it still looks like one, and it's surrounded on three sides by greenery. Highgate Slopes, though? The term arouses suspicion. One north London estate agent broached the truth only with reluctance. "Highgate Slopes is just off Hornsey Lane it's sort of N19 but basically, it's Archway." Poets' Corner Having been put through to an agent called Penny, who works for Bushells in W3, I came straight out with my thesis. "Poets' Corner," I said, "is merely a pretentious way of describing a certain, admittedly quite salubrious, part of Acton." "No," she said, "it's called 'Poets' Corner' because it includes Milton Road, Chaucer Road and Shakespeare Road, and they," she concluded triumphantly, "are poets." Church Street Village Conscious of the strangely daunting sound of the words Stoke Newington, locals have long spoken of cosy, friendly "Stokey", but a phrase with a shorter pedigree is Church Street Village. "It's the new name for the area around Stoke Newington Church Street, N16," said an estate agent, "and it's being used to bring Stoke Newington up to Islington standards." I asked him whether there was anything at all villagey about Church Street Village? Was there any greenery around there, for example? "Greenery?" he said, "well, you've got Abney Park Cemetery." Putney Heath Putney Heath is, not to put too fine a point on it, Roehampton, which is actually quite a smart area, but made problematic for local estate agents by having a large council estate to the west of Roehampton Lane. So, a couple of years ago, they started referring to the whole area by the name of the adjacent common. It's never really caught on. Ladywell Village Catford and Lewisham are words that tend - if you're an estate agent - to stick in the craw, hence the rise and rise of the term Ladywell Village to describe a fairly genteel area sandwiched between these two forbidding localities. "Ladywell Village," one estate agent told me, in a rare outburst of straight- talking, "is not that villagey." But a spokesman for Lewisham Council disagreed. "There are quite a few trees there - probably about a hundred," he said thoughtfully, "especially if you count the saplings in the park." The Nightingale Triangle "If you start at Balham Station," says David Males of Heart estate agents, "and start walking along Balham High Road to Clapham South, then turn left into Nightingale Lane and left again at Ravenslea Road, you come straight back to Balham Station, and that," he concluded proudly, "is the Nightingale Triangle." "Mmm " I said, "but is the Nightingale Triangle a real place or just a ruse to avoid using the dreaded word 'Balham?'" "Absolutely not," said Mr Males, "the Nightingale Triangle really exists. It's got Nightingale Square in the middle, and it actually is a triangle. Well sort of."

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