Mews houses are traditionally located in quiet safe streets in good central locations making them make a wonderful pied a terre.
The compact structure and layout of mews houses suits a lock up and leave lifestyle. However, increasingly developers and owners are trying to extend mews houses and create cavernous basements which are out of keeping with their traditional layout and do not create attractive practical spaces, unless they happen to be exceptionally wide and large enough to allow more light in, such examples are rare.
Take a mews house arranged over two floors comprising of around 3,000 square feet; a developer comes along and instantly thinks to double the square footage, create two extra floors and include a cinema in the dug-out basement. Suddenly, the mews house , appealing for it’s practical layout, period charm and quiet tucked-away location, ideal as bolt hole, or for a mature couple downsizing, or a young professional(s) is morphed into a large overdeveloped space, which is out of place and sits uneasily alongside its natural neighbours.
I recently took a client to see a mews house, which had grown up and down by three floors, needless to say we did not make an offer!
