Living in a coach house

Behind most of the grand squares and terraces of west London runs a narrower street. The houses on the squares had their carriages and horses kept out of sight, in stables on a cobbled lane at the back, with rooms above for the grooms and coachmen. These lanes are the mews.

When the motor car replaced the horse in the early twentieth century, the mews lost their purpose almost overnight. Some became garages, some workshops, and many were converted into small houses. By the 1960s they had become fashionable, and today a well-kept mews house is one of the most particular things you can buy in London.

What makes them appealing is also what makes them unusual. Most mews houses are two or three storeys high and a single room deep, with windows on one side only. The ground floor was built for carriages, so it is often open and generous; the floors above are lower, more domestic. The best conversions make use of both: a kitchen and dining room behind the old carriage doors, and bedrooms in the old grooms’ quarters.

The cobbles, the narrowness and the lack of through traffic give many mews a quiet that is hard to find a street away. That quiet comes with some practical questions. Many mews are privately owned or managed, which can mean service charges and rules about parking or alterations. Light can be limited where the houses face a high wall. And because many are in conservation areas, changes to the front are closely controlled.

None of this is a reason not to buy one. It is a reason to look closely, and to ask who owns the cobbles before you fall for them.