Maida Vale and Little Venice form a wholly residential district that is spacious, well-ordered and decidedly popular. It is strategically placed for the main routes north and west out of town as well as the Paddington Express trains to Heathrow Airport, which take just 15 minutes.

The large cream stucco houses around the Regent’s Canal (on Blomfield Road and Maida Avenue) are still the area’s biggest single homes, and the smartest. This leafy waterside neighbourhood, alongside the canal and the pretty triangular pool where it meets the Paddington Canal, is known as Little Venice.

Overall Maida Vale is a rich mine of nice flats, big and small, old and new. What you won’t find here are the usual rows of small terraced houses. The wide roads and spacious layout makes for exceptionally light and pleasant flats with leafy outlooks, especially since many of the avenues of tall white terraces and red-brick mansion blocks conceal shared gardens totally unsuspected by passers by.