For sale: apartments in Kensington with a concierge service linked to Harrods
Allen House off Kensington High Street also offers potential buyers the much coveted RBKC residents' parking permit.


A return to Edwardian splendour is promised at Allen House, a 1908 red-brick mansion building just off Kensington High Street, London W8, that is currently being reimagined by JV partners Topland, O&D London and Residence One.
Sales launched in February, an exciting Harrods concierge service was recently announced and, currently, prospective buyers can visit a two-bedroom show apartment on the ground floor. This showcases joinery by Concept Bespoke and furniture and artwork installed by Residence One, including a kitchen banquette in a highly covetable shade of rich green (moss or olive? — we couldn’t decide). Renovations include the addition of a penthouse level, which offers far-reaching views over some of the smartest rooftops in London.
‘The redevelopment of Allen House is a particularly exciting delivery for the Kensington market,’ notes Rupert des Forges of Knight Frank, which are marketing the property together with Strutt & Parker. He particularly praises the ‘full front-of-house service and a rare landscaped communal garden’.
‘This beautiful historic building has been crying out for a sympathetic refurbishment,’ comments Josh Ayres of Strutt & Parker, who finds that buyers are ‘increasingly setting their sights on high-quality new residences within beautiful period buildings, attracted to modern amenities alongside historical features. Allen House ticks both these boxes.’
Due to complete this summer, Allen House will comprise 45 studio, one-, two- and three-bedroom luxury residences, plus two penthouses; several apartments will have direct access to a private garden, landscaped by Kinland Design, and others have their own balconies. A much-coveted RBKC residents’ parking permit comes with each apartment, and buyers can also benefit from a ‘one-of-a-kind’ Peloton gym and meeting room. Apartments from£1.24 million.
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Annunciata grew up in the wilds of Lancashire and now lives in Hampshire with a husband, two daughters and an awful pug called Parsley. She’s been floating round the Country Life office for more than a decade, her work winning the Property Magazine of the Year Award in 2022 (Property Press Awards). Before that, she had a two-year stint writing ‘all kinds of fiction’ for The Sunday Times Travel Magazine, worked in internal comms for Country Life’s publisher (which has had many names in recent years but was then called IPC Media), and spent another year researching for a historical biographer, whose then primary focus was Graham Greene and John Henry Newman and whose filing system was a collection of wardrobes and chests of drawers filled with torn scraps of paper. During this time, she regularly gave tours of 17th-century Milton Manor, Oxfordshire, which may or may not have been designed by Inigo Jones, and co-founded a literary, art and music festival, at which Johnny Flynn headlined. When not writing and editing for Country Life, Annunciata is also a director of TIN MAN ART, a contemporary art gallery founded in 2021 by her husband, James Elwes.
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