UK's 'most notorious address' Dolphin Square to get £400m makeover with gym and 200 new apartments

Dolphin Square in Pimlico.
Nigel Howard

Plans for a £400 million overhaul of the London apartment block described as “the UK’s most notorious address” are unveiled today.

The owners of Dolphin Square in Pimlico are to seek planning permission from Westminster council for the demolition and rebuilding of the north side of the square. An extra floor will be added to each of the other three sides.

The work will add 200 new apartments and refurbish all 13 “houses” in the 1,200-flat complex, built in the Thirties. Under the plans, from architects Eric Parry, 7,000 windows will be replaced and a gym and offices will be built underground.

The 7.5-acre complex was built in 1937 and quickly became popular with MPs, peers and senior civil servants because of its proximity to Westminster and Whitehall.

The expansion plans for Dolphin Square.

Over the years Dolphin Square has been associated with several scandals — “blackshirt” leader Oswald Mosley was arrested at his flat there during the Second World War, and Admiralty clerk John Vassall was living in the square when he was unmasked as a Soviet spy in 1962.

Princess Anne is one former resident of Dolphin Square.
Getty Images

More recently the Metropolitan Police investigated allegations of child abuse involving senior military, law enforcement and political figures at the square during the Seventies and Eighties. The inquiry closed last year.

Other tenants have included Princess Anne, Harold Wilson, Sid James and Barbara Windsor. In John le Carré’s latest novel, A Legacy Of Spies, Dolphin Square is home to several safe houses.

In 2015 American company Westbrook took control of Dolphin Square, still the biggest block of private flats in Britain. It paid freeholder Friends Provident £200 million. Rents average £400 a week for a one-bedroom flat. About 200 tenants pay 50 per cent of market rent, on leases that expire in 2034.

Work on the five-year redevelopment is expected to start in 2020. Mark Donnor, of Westbrook, said, “Dolphin Square will become a bigger and much more interesting building. But it will remain a middle-market block. We don’t know anywhere else in Zone 1 were you can rent at these prices.”

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