Terribly common: London agent Marsh & Parsons is offering downloadable walking tours of Clapham, Battersea and Balham

Full marks to London estate agent Marsh & Parsons, which is offering downloadable walking tours of three London postcodes, each an hour long offering insights and directions to local attractions and historic sites and, one thing we particularly like, downloadale photos from times past for walkers to compare today’s modern world against.

Also, Marsh and Parsons has arranged for free or reduced-costs treats for walkers along the way in local cafés, restaurants and shops.

As a further inducement, the company is offering a gift to anyone who downloads the tour (the minor catch being you’ve got to to your local branch to claim it) as well as the chance to win a picnic for ten people.

The tours,which Marsh & Parsons says are designed to appeal to families, house-hunters wanting to get to know an area better or simply those interested in where they live, wind around SW London covering Balham, Clapham Old Town and Battersea.

One famous SW London site the Balham tour visits is Du Cane Court, a huge 1930s mansion block on Tooting Broadway that, its downloadable tour points out, has been used as a film location for the Agatha Christie’s Poirot films. But the PrimeLocation Blog would like to add to this – the building is also home to curmudgeonly comic and longstanding Balham resident Arthur (or Arfur) Smith. Also, during WW2 the German army planned to use the building as their UK headquarters following an invasion.

The tours will be available online to download from the Marsh & Parsons website until the end of this month (July 2010).

From oranges and lemons to olives, grapes, figs, and even pineapples, it really is possible to produce a crop (no promises how bountiful, however) of these sun-loving superfoods with a little due care and attention, and admittedly, rather a lot of hard work (think hot beds of manure and steam-manipulated temperatures…).

However, if you’d prefer someone else to have done the hard work for you, go for one that was made earlier. We’ve got a number of properties on Primelocation.com that come with a ready-made exotic fruit garden, orchard or grove. Here are some of our favourites:

Southmoor, Oxfordshire
£2.5 million

This country house means business. Not content with the 5,500 sq ft, computer controlled greenhouse, it also boasts a fruit garden producing figs, peaches and plums.

Torquay, South Devon
£1.15 million

Live in Devon but pretend you’re in Greece, with an olive tree courtyard, deck and uninterrupted sea views.

Lane End, Buckinghamshire
£2.5 million

Follow the sweeping drive of this converted corn barn round to the garden, where olive trees mingle with an avenue of beech, a large pond and a timber deck.

Lamberhurst, Kent
£1.2 million

Situated within a vineyard, you should never be short of grapes here. And if you want to branch out to other fruits, there’s plenty of room – this place comes with five acres.

Villandry
They say: “Creative, indulgent hampers brimming with glorious, carefully sourced luxury foods”. We say: “Yes, please”. Great Portland Street’s foodie institution has three hampers to choose from, filled with all sorts of goodies from small, artisan English, French and Italian producers. The bad news is they are only available in London, but with the capital’s abundance of parks, you won’t be short of picnic destinations to enjoy them in. And you get to keep the cool bag too.

Forman and Field
The mail order fine food company has a number of hampers to choose from, but our favourite is the Top Pick Hamper. It doesn’t come cheap, at £119 for two, but any hamper described as a ‘cornucopia of mouthwatering delights’ is worthy of such a price tag. Inside the wicker hamper, you’ll find soused red onion salad, fillet of Scotch beef and Chapel Down brut rose, amongst other things.

Fortnum and Mason
The original and also one of the best. Fortnum and Mason also offer numerous hampers, including three summer ones, or you can make your own. We like the Basket of England (think cheeses, preserves, chocolates and other delicacies), and the simple but sweet Piccadilly, which is full of cream tea delights.

It is pretty remarkable that, since Saxon times, the house has passed from generation to generation in an almost unbroken line. So doesn’t it seem sad to you that it’s now on offer to the highest bidder?

The current incumbent, Nick Stirling, married in to Shakenhurst Hall – his wife Amanda grew up there and inherited the house after her father’s death in 2007. However, within a year, Amanda died of cancer. The estate passed into a trust for their children – most of which was earmarked for their son Rowland, not so much for their daughter Phoebe (who’d be a girl in the world of the landed gentry?) – but now the children, being at university/on a gap year and without the required funds to run a country estate – have had to put it up for sale.

What has got under my skin with this story is that this country pile is so much more than a pretty pile of bricks. Home might be where the heart is for most people, but in this case, hundreds of years of family history will also go with the sale, not to mention Amanda’s grave, which is in the estate’s grounds. How would you put a price on that (although, of course, they have, and it’s offers over £12 million only, please).

Read the whole story on the Mail Online – the history of this place is really quite fascinating and involves everyone from William the Conqueror to Michael Heseltine and, strangely, even Dominic West of the Wire fame. And if you fancy making a bid on the place yourself, check out its listing on Primelocation.com.

TV presenter Kevin McCloud. Will his Grand Designs show soon have a rival over on the BBC?

But not so at the BBC, where producers are looking for property speculators prepared to invest their time (but not their money) in a project to be featured in a new TV series.

It will be similar to Channel 4′s Grand Designs but, rather than focussing on the emotional and architectural stresses and strains of building a dream home, will challenge would-be property developers to make theirs the most profitable property project of the six to feature on the programme.

The winning team get to keep theirs and reap the profits but the other developments will be sold off and the money kept by the show’s backer, an unnamed ‘property guru’.

So if you think building or converting a property is one way to make a small fortune and you’re prepared to have a camera crew follow your every move then get in contact with our friends at UK Land Agent, who are helping the BBC scour the land for tomorrow’s next property prog stars.

Foreign tastes: a crowd of customers outside a cafe in Notting Hill, London

But the problems of sticking your political chin out like this are laid bare by agent Knight Frank, who today revealed that central London’s prime property postcodes are being kept afloat by some very high-end water wings; a flood of inbound overseas buyers.

Half of all £2 million-plus luxury properties sold in central London go to foreigner buyers,  rising to 60 per cent in Mayfair, Knightsbridge and Hampstead, and on up to 70 per cent of all homes over £5 million.

And Knight Frank is not the only agent to notice this. Peter Rollins, MD of agent Marsh & Parsons, was flagging this at the end of March.

When he first started out as an estate agent, a handful of postcodes in central London were popular with mainly US and then latterly Arab buyers.

But these days the centre of the capital is a rainbow village, as a slow walk around soon reveals. Half a dozen languages can often be heard burbling away in the background and the Knight Frank figures reflect this – 51 nationalities are present compared to just 30 in mid-2008.

Russians ares the most prevalent, followed by Americans, Italians, Indian, French, UAE citizens, Germans, Greeks, Norwegians and South Africans. And don’t forget the new arrivals; Kazaks and Brazilians.

This new wealth being spent on the capital’s stucco’d central postcodes has created a  market of worryingly bubble-like proportions. Prices have risen by 24 per cent in 15 months, Knight Franks says, and are now only six per cent below their mid-2008 peak.

The question is, will Home Secretary Theresa May’s desire to see net immigration fall burst it?

Wallpaper has been making a comeback in recent years as traditionalists rail against the white-wall, white table, white sofa fashionistas who’ve spurned chintz, flummery and strong colours. And to make the point, Chancellor George Osborne comes from a paper and glue background – upmarket wallpaper and fabrics firm Osborne & Little.

First out of the fashion starting gate came the ‘feature wall’ which means three walls white, one wallpapered. But now here’s the wallscape – same thing but much more expensive.

A wallscape by interiors firm Brahm

Wallscapes are essentially bespoke wallpaper that’s designed to chime in with and accomodate room colour, size, doorways, floors and furniture. And interiors expert Pierre Brahm says one extraordinary aspect of the wallscape is that – unlike expensive wallpaper – you can take it with you should you move. So not only is it a desirable dressing for a wall but “an heirloom for the future”  too,  he says.

And I guess he should know – his company Brahm Interiors works with a clutch of wallscape creators including a leader in the field,  award-winning and Vogue magazine-endorsed firm Fromental. It offers a range of bespoke wall coverings which it describes as ‘roomskins’ and ‘couture for your walls’.

In the old days this sort of thing would be have been called a mural, of course, but a fashion during the late 1970s and early 1980s (particularly in France) for walls covered in faux scenery including forests, beaches and mountain ranges meant the more fashionable end of the market has  sought new words to describe their products – hence wallscapes.

It says: “The great houses of England are dropping like flies. Or, rather, their incumbents are heading down the aisles at a highly alarming rate for those girls who have grown up dreaming of doing as well as the Hanbury sisters.”

After listing the fates of those incumbents name-checked in Tatler’s last ’10 Houses to Marry Now’ round up, the magazine throws a lifeline to the girls whose dreams are in jeopardy…

“Fear not, chatelaines in waiting. Be bold. Be strong,” Tatler urges. “They’re out there, and they’re worth catching.”

And who are the men that Tatler are serving up on a silver platter this time? Viscount Weymouth of Longleat; Tapeley Park’s Hector Christie; Robert Byng of Wrotham Park;  Nevill Holt’s David Ross; The Earl of Shafterbury and St Giles House; and, erm, Madonna’s ex Guy Ritchie.

Find out more in the July issue of Tatler.

And for those with the funds to secure their own great English house, may we suggest the following…

Noseley, Leicestershire
£12million

Hare Hill Hall, Cheshire
£9.5million

Chesters House, Northumberland
£7million

Gordon House, Surrey
£15million

It too gets caught up in tennis frenzy. Having the closest underground station to the All England Lawn Tennis Club where Wimbledon is held, Southfields’ tube platforms are decked out in grass for the duration of the tournament every year, to welcome the hoards of fans and spectators as they flood through the station on their way to Murray Mound.

They may come just once a year. But what of the area for the other 50 weeks? Sandwiched between Wimbledon Park and Wimbledon Common, Southfields is a leafy enclave of Victorian houses on long tree-lined streets. Boasting a village atmosphere, activity centres around Replingham Road with its obligatory range of boutiques and independent shops. The area plays host to two galleries, a butcher, fishmonger, fruiterer, tea rooms and the largest independent children’s bookshop in London.

Famous Southfields residents, past and present, include snooker’s Jimmy White, Paul Merton, David Blunkett and Blue Peter’s Peter Duncan.

And so to the properties: just what can you get for your money in Southfields? Here is our pick of the best homes currently on the market there.

Orchard House

£15million-worth of luxury, this eight-bedroom house has plenty to keep you entertained, from the indoor swimming pool and spa complex to the state of the art cinema room. If you make it outside, peer over the high walls to enjoy the view of adjacent Wimbledon Common.

Parkside

Another one enjoying the common on its doorstep, this five-bedroom house, complete with huge and rather gorgeous orangery extension, is on the market for £2,700,000.

Fairlawns

Originally home to Queen Victoria’s dentist, this impressive Grade II listed building has been converted into ten luxury apartments. On offer is a three-bed flat with private terrace, underfloor heating and 24-hour concierge, for £1,950,000.

Search for more property to buy in Southfields.