The Bishops Avenue: why Billionaires' Row remains London's most divisive street

“Magnificent freehold site for sale with planning consent,” reads one ‘for sale’ sign on The Bishops Avenue. “Seven luxury apartments with underground parking,” reads another. These sites, though, stand behind tall metal gates, out of view.

The Bishops Avenue, which stretches between East Finchley and Hampstead Heath, has been a playground for super-rich buyers since building began in 1894. Even the Conservation Area Character Appraisal for the street states that “from the beginning, it was intended to be the setting for expensive houses.”

The street was nicknamed Millionaires’ Row in the 1930s, later upgrading to Billionaires’ Row, following an influx of billionaire buyers. In the late 1980s, the Saudi royal family purchased 10 houses; in 2008, a 28,000 square foot mansion built by the Turkish businessman Halis Toprak sold for £50 million, breaking the record for the most expensive new-build house in Britain at the time. Since then, residents have included Prince William's godfather, King of Greece Constantine II; pop megastar Justin Bieber, who rented a 15-bedroom, £25,000-a-week super mansion; and actress Salma Hayek and her husband, the French billionaire Francois-Henri Pinault.

As well as its proximity to Hampstead Heath and Highgate Village, part of The Bishops Avenue’s appeal has been its lack of planning regulation, which has allowed buyers to build vast, idiosyncratic mansions on its sprawling plots, explains Noah Pearlman, partner at Harding Green. Towering neoclassical mansions stand side by side with modernist fortresses or neo-Jacobean half-timbered buildings. “There are little to no building restrictions due to Bishops Avenue not being in the conservation area,” Pearlman says. “Every property is different. Unlike a Victorian or an Edwardian street, there’s no continuity in structure or architecture. It’s a little bit like a Monopoly board.”

The Bishops Avenue’s mansions houses remain hidden away behind tall gates or hedges; each with its own CCTV warning or ‘beware of the dog’ sign. Security cameras peek out over gates or sit atop stone pillars, like watchful little eyes. The gates themselves rarely open, except to admit a delivery person.

A state of change

Over the last decade, the street has been in a state of change. In 2014, The Guardian published an investigation that found that there were an estimated £350 million worth of vacant properties on the most prestigious stretch of the road, with at least 120 empty bedrooms. Some of these have been razed, the land advertised for sale, while others remain vacant. Halfway up the road, behind metal fencing dotted with warning signs, are the ruins of three grandly titled properties —The Georgians, Redcroft and Ilkley House— which have now been demolished, despite being purchased alongside at least two other properties for £73 million in 2013, according to Land Registry records. Nature has reclaimed the land where they once stood, covering old stone fountains with moss, growing high and wild, spilling dead leaves out from the fences.

There are ‘for sale’ signs throughout the street, promising, like the “magnificent freehold site”, opportunities for buyers: boundless potential or luxurious living. The top of the road, closest to the Heath, though, is undergoing the most significant change, rumbling with the sound of construction. The luxurious new Buxmead development, for example, claims to be part of the regeneration of what had “become known as a street of absentee owners [that] was perceived as having ‘lost its soul’”. Inside, there are 20 individual apartments ranging from 3,000 to 10,000 square feet. There are currently apartments for sale for £11.7 million and £7.75 million with Savills and Sotheby’s International Realty respectively.

In the coming years, other upmarket developments will also open on The Bishops Avenue. Riverstone, a luxury retirement community, is scheduled to open in 2026, according to its website, with apartment prices starting at £1.43 million. A few doors down, upscale care home Signature opened its Highgate branch, which claims to be “the most expensive care home ever built in the UK”. Next door, property developer Valouran is launching 30 new residences on a 2.25-acre site, set to open later this year.

“The road has gone through waves of changes. It’s in a massive transition at the moment,” says Jeremy Fine, partner at Godfrey and Barr estate agency. “It has turned a corner. For a long period of time, there was a huge amount of empty houses and not even building work going on. These developments, whilst they’re apartments, are not £400,000 apartments. There are some amazing, top-quality properties being built, and the sites are slowly being brought back to their former glory.”

To Fine, these multi-million-pound developments are evidence that the street still holds immense value. Buxmead, he says, is already attracting “high profile, well known people”. “No developer would sink that sort of money into schemes if it wasn’t on the way back.”

Pearlman, who says he has driven down The Bishops Avenue almost every day for the last 18 years, believes that the changes happening on the road are symptomatic of a wider shift. “The Bishops Avenue has long been a barometer of what’s happening at the top tier of the London property market,” he says. “Despite economic challenges over the years, it’s as popular as ever today — albeit in a different way. A great deal of those extremely large mansions have gone and continue to be eroded away by global developers wanting to reimagine this infamous avenue.”

To Pearlman, the rise in these “micro-village” developments reflects the pull of village-style living amongst London’s wealthy. The new developments, he believes, are slowly changing the demographic of the street: fewer empty mega-mansions and more multiple-occupancy properties used as a permanent home.

“For as long as I can remember, it’s been the wealthy that live in London for a few months of the year,” he explains. “You’ve got families that have lived in Hampstead for generations and they are downsizing — but they want to downsize to something which still feels luxurious, which their family can visit, and also feels like it’s a still a status property…I think these developments will be more of a primary property for Londoners.”

The future of The Bishops Avenue

Fine is selling a couple of the larger, detached properties on the road, including an eight-bedroom ambassadorial mansion on the market for £20 million. It features a full-size tennis court and changing pavilion, 20-foot reception hall and an in-house nightclub, complete with DJ booth and stage. This, however, is being marketed as “a great project”. A house like this, he believes, is less likely to be purchased by a developer and more likely to be bought up as a family home. “Most people that are going to buy and flatten it are going to do it for themselves, to build the house of their dreams.”

To Pearlman, though, The Bishops Avenue has “gone past the point of no return”, with its enormous single-occupancy homes likely to continue to be replaced by new developments. Buyers looking for these kinds of properties, he believes, may head to surrounding roads like Compton Avenue, Sheldon Avenue and Stormont Road.

“I think there’s going to be a spurt of a lot of these grand old mansions disappearing over the next 10 years on that longer stretch, because nobody other than a developer is going to buy them,” he says. “I’m looking forward to the reimagination of The Bishops Avenue purchaser which is looking for a primary London home. It may turn it into more of a community environment.”

With all this change, then, is The Bishops Avenue still Billionaires’ Row? “I think it will always hold that title,” says Fine. “There’s no question of the size of plots. There’s some very interesting people that choose to live on the road, and they could live anywhere. That’s why it’s The Bishops Avenue, and it always will be.”

Pearlman disagrees: “I don’t think it is. I don’t think those with that amount of wealth are buying into Bishops Avenue anymore. I’m not sure what the new word’s going to be.”

At the intersection of The Bishops Avenue and the A1, there is a sign advertising eight brand new luxury apartments. Next to it is a piece of graffiti which reads: “When you read this, smile”. There is certainly an irony in these new flats being advertised next to a lamppost which has been hit by a car and cordoned off with police tape, just like there is an irony in glossy new developments being built opposite the ruins of former mansions. The Bishops Avenue has long been a divisive street, full of juxtapositions, and, for now, these remain as pronounced as ever.