1 Bedroom Flat, Eythorne Road, London, SW9

Set on the third floor of a modern development on Eythorne Road, this beautifully kept one-bedroom flat measures around 534 sq ft, with a southwest-facing 21 ft open-plan kitchen/living room, a large double bedroom with fitted wardrobes, a private balcony looking directly across Eythorne Park and excellent transport links between Oval, Stockwell and Brixton.

The main living space is one of the flat's best features. At around 21 ft 4 long, the kitchen sits neatly at one end and leaves enough room for a proper dining area and a genuinely comfortable sitting room beyond. There is none of that slightly depressing modern-flat ritual of deciding whether you want a sofa or a table, and it isn’t one of those rooms where you shake your head at the developer either! It’s a properly sized space with generous space to zone your living and dining spaces.

The kitchen at one end is clean, simple, and classy. It has handleless gloss cabinetry and integrated appliances, including an oven and a slimline dishwasher, plus a glass splashback that finishes it off. Visually, it’s lovely, and practically, it just works. Engineered timber flooring runs throughout the space, and a long wall of built-in cabinetry at the opposite end of the kitchen gives you space for books, records, plants, glassware, etc., and also serves as a handy media unit, allowing you to install a TV and associated peripherals neatly.

This end of the reception space opens onto the balcony, making it bright in part due to the sheer size of the glazing, and in part due to the southwest-facing aspect. The balcony is covered, properly usable and has enough room for a small table and chairs, with an open outlook straight across Eythorne Park. There is something particularly nice about having this much sky and greenery visible from a London flat; coffee outside before work, dinner with the doors open in summer, or simply somewhere to sit when you have spent enough of the day looking at four walls.

The bedroom is also generous, measuring around 15 ft 5 by 9 ft 7. There is ample room around a king-size bed; mirrored fitted wardrobes take care of the storage, and a pair of glazed doors at the far end bring in plenty of daylight and another open view.

The bathroom is nicely done in warm neutral tiling, with a full-size bath and overhead rainfall shower, a large mirrored wall and recessed lighting. There is also additional storage off the hallway, which means coats, suitcases, vacuum cleaners and all the unphotogenic parts of life have somewhere to go.

Tenure-wise, the flat has around 115 years remaining on the lease. The service charge is £2,020 per annum, with ground rent of £300 per annum, which keeps the annual running costs relatively straightforward to understand.

Location-wise, Eythorne Road sits in a tucked-away pocket of SW9 between Brixton, Oval, Stockwell and Camberwell, giving you excellent access to some of South London’s best food, music, theatre and nightlife without having to live right in the middle of it. The development has the option of paying for an unallocated parking space, at the paltry cost of approx. £100 PA! There is the option of having an allocated space, too, which comes at a higher cost. Shorter-term visitor parking is also easily organised.

Oval Underground is around 0.7 miles away (a 16 min walk), Stockwell around 0.9 miles, and Loughborough Junction is 0.8 miles, while Brixton Underground is around 0.9 miles. That gives you the Northern line from Oval, both the Victoria and Northern lines from Stockwell, Thameslink from Loughborough Junction, and of course there’s a variety of buses and no shortage of taxis in this part of town for when you just want that convenience.

For something greener and considerably slower-paced, Myatt’s Fields Park is only around 0.2 miles away. It is a particularly lovely Victorian park with its bandstand, mature gardens, tennis courts and community greenhouse, while The Little Cat Cafe serves breakfast, lunch and coffee using seasonal produce from the park where possible. The programme here is also unusually active, with live music, festivals, markets and community events throughout the year.

Then there is Brixton, roughly a mile away, and this is where living here becomes rather fun.

Brixton Village and Market Row remain one of London’s great cultural collisions: more than 100 independent traders representing over 50 nationalities, with restaurants, cocktail bars, record shops, food stalls, fashion, homeware and long-established market traders sitting alongside each other. It is still somewhere you can go out intending to buy vegetables and somehow come home three hours later having eaten something excellent, bought a record and had a drink you hadn't planned on.

Music is woven into the neighbourhood too. The O2 Academy Brixton continues to pull serious international acts into SW9, while Brixton House has become an important home for theatre, spoken word, comedy, dance and new writing. Its programme stretches from performance poetry and live music to work rooted in Caribbean, African and wider diasporic storytelling.

Film nights are covered by The Ritzy on Windrush Square, one of London’s oldest purpose-built cinemas and still one of its nicest, with its original Edwardian auditorium alongside five screens, a café-bar and Upstairs at the Ritzy hosting DJs, comedy, quizzes and live music. Next door, the Black Cultural Archives tells another part of Brixton’s story, preserving one of the country’s most important collections relating to African and Caribbean history in Britain.

And that cultural depth matters. Brixton isn't simply an area that acquired a few good restaurants and became fashionable; its markets were the commercial and social heart of the Afro-Caribbean community that settled here after the Second World War, and that history continues to shape its food, music, politics, art and identity today. It gives the neighbourhood a texture that newer London “destinations” simply cannot manufacture.

So while the flat itself is straightforward in all the right ways — modern, bright, well laid out and easy to look after — life outside it can be anything but. You have a park outside the balcony, another beautiful park around the corner, several strong transport options within walking distance and Brixton's restaurants, cinema, markets, music and nightlife close enough to become part of everyday life.