Comment: 'Why are Londoners mad for Victorian homes?'

Victorian values don’t hold many positive connotations today, but when it comes to house hunting it seems we can’t get enough of 19th century architecture.

They may have been colonising prudes but you can’t deny the appeal of those high ceilings, wooden floors and generous room proportions. So much so that RightMove has reported that ‘Victorian’ is its most popular period property search term, beating out ‘Georgian’, ‘Edwardian’, ‘Tudor’ and ‘Regency’ (sorry, Bridgerton fans).

This obsession with the old is very much cultural. My earliest memories are of living in Hong Kong, where new equals better. The block of flats where I took my first steps were demolished years ago to make way for another gleaming tower.

When my parents bought our first family home in England, on the other hand, I was horrified by the Victorian semi. It had a thunderbox toilet, too many spiders, and at least one ghost (seriously).

I’ve come around to their charms, but there are plenty of cases of buyer beware when it comes to a house that’s over a hundred years old. Many proud owners of period homes are calling for smelling salts and a fainting couch when they discover crumbling chimneys, rising damp and drafts that leach time, money, and heat.

While period properties tend to hold their value compared to new builds, that’s only because contemporary volume housebuilders have earned them a reputation for shoddy construction and shady leaseholding contracts.

What we need is the Victorian passion for wholesale decent homebuilding with elan, but with a modern low carbon and energy efficient bent.

So it was heartening to see the RIBA London Awards 2024 give so many exciting new build homes their flowers, and if you cast your eyes over this week’s round-up there are some very spiffy new builds with excellent transport links. Perhaps new can become the new old.