Living in Pinner: area guide to homes, schools and transport

This charming and historic town dates back to medieval times. It offers striking architecture, leafy open spaces and a 25-minute commute to London.
Images: Daniel Lynch
Anthea Masey27 January 2017

With a clutch of fine timber-framed buildings, Pinner High Street, a remarkable survival of a medieval village, is also a café culture hub and a star in its own right, so picturesque that it is often used as a filming location. Eddie Redmayne was spotted there shooting the Stephen Hawking biopic The Theory of Everything, for which the young British star scooped this year’s best actor Oscar.

Considered the wealthy side of the London borough of Harrow, Pinner has a strong sense of community, with four key events each year. There are celebrations in April for St George’s Day, then comes Pinner Fair in May — granted charter status in 1336 by King Edward III — the Pinner Village Show in Pinner Memorial Park on the second Saturday in September, and Pinner Pantomime Evening, on the last Thursday of each November.

Development came to Pinner in 1842 when London and Birmingham Railway opened a station at Hatch End. The Metropolitan Railway followed in 1885, with a station in Pinner itself. However, wide-scale development had to wait several decades. It wasn’t until the Twenties and Thirties that Pinner became one of those areas forever linked with Metro-Land and the outward expansion of London along the Metropolitan line.


What there is to buy in Pinner
This historic town predominantly offers detached, semi-detached and terrace interwar properties, but there are also medieval cottages in Pinner Village, Edwardian houses and more modern flats. One-bedroom flats are mainly in modern blocks and vary in price from about £230,000 — which is the asking price for a one-bedroom flat in need of modernisation off Pinner Hill Road — to £299,950, the asking price for one in The Avenue in the Hatch End area.

Two-bedroom flats, either period house conversions or in period or modern blocks, vary from £285,000 for a modern home in Pinner Grove to £499,950 for a mansion flat in Cecil Park, both of which are within walking distance of the Tube station and town centre.

There are two-bedroom period  cottages in Pinner Village, while two-bedroom bungalows are scattered throughout the district. Two-bedroom bungalows currently for sale vary in price from £425,000 in Mount Park Road to £585,000 in Lyndhurst Avenue. There are two-bedroom houses in the Pinnerwood Park Estate conservation area. This estate was built along garden suburb lines in the Arts and Crafts style. A two-bedroom house in Latimer Gardens is for sale for £499,950.

Family homes: Pinner has an array of large houses situated on quiet leafy roads.


Pinner has an abundance of three- and four-bedroom family houses built in the Twenties and Thirties. Three-bedroom houses vary from £425,000, the asking price of a modern home in Farthings Close, to £875,000 for a detached Metro-Land house in Moss Lane. The town also has some very old houses left over from its rural past, including a Tudor cottage for sale in Wiltshire Lane for £695,000. Four-bedroom houses range from £565,000 for a terrace house in Rickmansworth Road to £1.35 million for a detached house in Grange Gardens in Pinner Village. The largest family homes range from £665,000 — the price of an extended five-bedroom interwar semi in  St Michael’s Crescent — to £3,995,000 for a six-bedroom detached house in Park View Road in Pinner Hill Estate.

Travel: in Zone 5, Pinner is on the Metropolitan line and it’s a 25-minute ride to Baker Street. An annual travelcard costs £2,188. Hatch End is on the Overground in Zone 6, and trains to Euston take 38 minutes. An annual travelcard costs £2,344.

The area attracts: estate agent Liam Byrne of Gibbs Gillespie says the mix is one of local buyers and incomers, with primary school catchment areas in high demand. 

What is there to rent in Pinner 
Matthew Marchant, rental manager of Gibbs Gillespie, says rentals range from one-bedroom flats to large family houses. There is a strong demand for family houses in the catchment area of popular primary schools, with three-bedroom family houses ranging from £1,750 a month to £2,000 a month. Rental yields hover at about four per cent.

Postcode: HA5 is the Pinner postcode, which also includes Hatch End and parts of Eastcote, Rayners Lane and Carpenders Park.

Best roads: estate agent Liam Byrne, also of Gibbs Gillespie, says top choices are Pinner Village, where there is a mix of inter-war cottages and family houses, and Pinner Hill Estate, where buyers can find detached houses with large gardens that sell for between £1.5 million and £6 million. The Pinner Green area around Montesole Playing Fields is also sought after. There is a large Tesco and the playing field has tennis courts and is home to Pinner Cricket Club. Byrne recently sold Elton John’s childhood home in Pinner Hill Road, which went on sale for £525,000. Most semi-detached houses in the area sell for about £625,000, or £585,000 if it is in a main road.

Up and coming: Byrne is tipping the area around Beaulieu Drive, where new state comprehensive Pinner High School opens in September next year in buildings vacated by the former private Heathfield School for Girls, which has amalgamated with Northwood College for Girls. This is an area of mainly semi-detached inter-war houses and, according to Byrne, the excitement about the new school has caused average house price to rise from about £660,000 to £750,000 in the past year. The area includes West Towers Conservation Area, a road of particularly well-detailed inter-war houses. 

Staying power: Pinner has a strong local following, although some families  move further out towards Beaconsfield, Gerrards Cross, Chesham, Denham and Rickmansworth.
 

Rising costs: House prices are increasing thanks to investment into the area, such as a new state comprehensive school due to open next September.


What’s new
Riverside Place (Preston Bennett Hamptons; 020 8954 8626) in Marsh Road is a development of 33 one- and two-bedroom flats. Two flats remain, both with two bedrooms, at £429,950, and completion is at the end of the year.

Charter Court (020 3535 2555) in Bridge Street is a Metropolitan housing association shared-ownership development of 26 one- and two-bedroom flats. Two-bedroom apartments are for sale with a market value of £355,000 (£124,250 for a 35 per cent share). 

Windmill Park (0300 456 2098) in Caulfield Gardens is a development of 160 (96 affordable and 64 for private sale and shared ownership) one- and two-bedroom flats and two-, three- and four-bedroom houses. Two houses for private sale, with two bedrooms, remain at £450,000.

Council: the London borough of Harrow is Labour controlled. Band D council tax for this year is £1,529.36.
 

Lifestyle

Leisure and the arts 
Harrow Arts Centre in Hatch End is a multi-function arts centre that offers plays, ballet, comedy, keep fit classes and children’s theatre clubs. The two nearest council-owned swimming pools are Hatch End Swimming Pool in Uxbridge Road and Highgrove Pool & Fitness Centre in Ruislip. There are two local golf clubs — Pinner Hill in Southview Road and Grim’s Dyke in Oxhey Lane.
 

Shops and restaurants 
Byrne describes Pinner as the area’s daytime shopping street and Hatch End along Uxbridge Road, with its many restaurants, as the nighttime street.
 

Pinner’s attractive High Street featuring medieval buildings leading up to the 14th-century parish church of St John is dominated by chain restaurants Zizzi, Café Rouge, Carluccio’s, Starbucks, Prezzo and Pizza Express. Friends is an independent fine dining restaurant using locally sourced produce wherever possible, while local pub the Queen’s Head occupies one of the oldest buildings in the street.


There are two independent delis, coffee and cake shops — Carpentier & Co and FoodieWuwdies. Earth White sells Farrow & Ball paint, jewellery and beauty products and offers an interior design service, while James Lakeland is a branch of a small women’s fashion chain. There is a branch of Sainsbury’s tucked away between the High Street and Pinner Tube station. 
 

Pinner’s main shopping street along Bridge Street has a more everyday feel with a number of charity shops intermingled with high street stores such as WH Smith, Boots, a branch of Lidl undergoing a facelift, Clarks, a baker and a butcher.

Hatch End, along Uxbridge Road, has a mix of restaurants and interiors stores. Chikayan is a large Chinese restaurant, Sea Pebbles specialises in seafood, San Marzanos does pizza and prosecco, while Black Pepper, Casa Mia and Fellini Acaffe are Italian restaurants. For posh burgers, go to Chuck, while B&K is a café specialising in traditional hot salt beef. Chaplins is a large furniture showroom that stocks designer brands such as Artemide, B&B Italia and Carl Hansen and, on the other side of the road, there is Moores Interiors.

Open space: Pinner Memorial Park in the town centre has a duck pond, a café, a bowling green and an aviary with an engaging flock of budgerigars. Pinner Park Farm is a 230-acre working farm south of Hatch End. It is owned by the local council, which has controversial plans to convert the farm buildings to residential use. Celandine Walk — named after a pretty spring flower — is a 12-mile walk along the River Pinn starting in the centre of town. Pinner is close to open countryside and the Chiltern Hills, an area of outstanding natural beauty.


Three things about Pinner
What links Potsdam’s palace with Pinner?
Sans Souci, in Pinner Hill Estate, was built in 1936 for German ambassador Joachim von Ribbentrop. He gave it its rather grand name, no doubt thinking of Sanssouci, the former summer palace of Frederick the Great, King of Prussia, which is located in Potsdam near Berlin. Sanssouci means “no worries”. When Von Ribbentrop returned to Germany in 1938, the house passed to leading Nazi Hermann Goering’s sister and, after she was imprisoned during the war, it was used as RAF officers’ quarters.


Where did 5,000 orphans get an education in Hatch End?
Harrow Arts Centre is based in a magnificent Victorian building that once housed the Royal Commercial Travellers’ Schools. They were opened in 1855 by Prince Albert to educate the orphans of commercial travellers or those that had fallen on hard times. The school closed in 1967, having educated 5,000 children. This was a large addition to the population of Pinner at the time and, in 1859, a chapel for the students was added to the medieval church of St John the Baptist, Pinner’s parish church in Church Lane.


Which famous illegitimate daughter lived out her final days in Pinner?
Horatia Nelson (1801–1881) was the illegitimate daughter of Lord Nelson and Emma Hamilton. After the death of her husband, she came to live in Pinner near her son, Nelson Ward. Sadly, her unmarried daughter, Eleanor, was killed outside the Queen’s Head pub in High Street, aged 48, when a horse bolted out of the pub yard. Horatia is buried in the parish churchyard.

Schools

Pinner has a good choice of state primary schools and a local comprehensive school that are all judged “outstanding” by Ofsted.

Primary schools
West Lodge in West End Lane; St John Fisher RC in Melrose Road; Pinner Wood in Latimer Gardens; Pinner Park Infants (ages three to seven) in Melbourne Avenue (its junior school is judged “good”); Grimsdyke in Sylvia Avenue; and Newton Farm in Ravenswood Crescent in nearby South Harrow.

Comprehensive schools
Nower Hill High (co-ed, ages 11 to 18) in George V Avenue. The other nearby comprehensive schools are Hatch End High (co-ed, ages 11 to 18) in Headstone Lane; Haydon School (co-ed, ages 11 to 18) in Wiltshire Lane; and Bishop Ramsey CofE in Hume Way, Ruislip — all are judged “good”. Pinner High School is located in Beaulieu Drive and opens in September 2016. Avanti House (co-ed, ages four to 18) in Beaulieu Drive is a new Hindu Free School, which is moving to a new building in Stanmore. Heathrow Aviation Engineering (co-ed, ages 14 to 18) is a new Free School and University Technical College in Northwood.


Private and Prep schools
There are also private primary and preparatory schools — Reddiford (ages two to 11) in Cecil Park; Buckingham College (co-ed, ages two to 11) in Rayners Lane; St John’s (boys, age three 13) — part of the Merchant Taylors’ Education Trust — in Potter Street Hill and St Martin’s (boys, ages three to 13) in Moor Park Road, both in Northwood; and Quainton Hall (co-ed, ages three to 11 for girls and ages three to 13 for boys) in Hindes Road, Harrow. 


Top public school Merchant Taylors’ School (boys, ages 11 to 18) is in Sandy Lodge Road, Northwood. There are also all-through private schools, which are Northwood College for Girls (ages three to 18) in Maxwell Road and St Helen’s (girls, ages three to 18) in Eastbury Road, both in Northwood. 

Nearby top private schools include Harrow School (boys, ages 13 to 18), but it only takes boarders, and the two Haberdashers’ Aske’s schools, for boys — known as Habsboys — (ages five to 18) in Elstree and for girls — known as Habsgirls (ages four to 18) — in Borehamwood.
 

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