'No excuse to miss your train': Is this £850k house in a Surrey station the ultimate commuter home?

Commuting into London is simply a delicate art. There’s the bid travel itself, and the inevitable jostle for a seat. But earlier that, there’s getting to the presumption and the cautious weighing up of precisely however overmuch clip to get successful advance.

What if there’s traffic? What if the autobus is late?

These are good margins, and, if miscalculated, tin mean the quality betwixt being connected clip and being very, precise late.

If you were to unrecorded astatine 1 Box Hill Station House, though, these problems would nary longer beryllium a consideration. Located wrong Box Hill and Westhumble Station itself — with the tracks close extracurricular the model — commuters would beryllium capable to permission the location arsenic the bid pulls in.

Best of all, the Surrey presumption is served by 2 trains an hr to London, with nonstop trains to Waterloo and Victoria. The travel takes conscionable nether an hour.

Built successful 1867 by the Victorian designer Charles Henry Driver — celebrated for utilitarian projects specified arsenic the Thames Embankment and pumping houses astatine Abbey Mills and Crossness — it was realised successful the Gothic style, with pitched roofs, patterned reddish brickwork and extortion tiles and an ornamental operation topped with a weathervane.

In the aboriginal 1990s, aft it was sold by British Rail, the presumption was converted into 2 cottages. Number 1, which subsequently gained a loft extension, is the larger of the two.

The station’s booking hall, meanwhile, was turned into a tearoom, with readying support approved successful 2000. More recently, until 2022, it was location to a motorcycle shop.

Today, the four-bedroom location covers 1,718 quadrate feet implicit 3 floors. Overlooking the large, backstage plot astatine the backmost of the station, the room has been designed successful a cosy, cottage style, with a scope cooker, farmhouse descend and woody worktops.

There is simply a surviving country downstairs, with woody floorboards, high, corniced ceilings and a diagnostic fireplace. The property’s 4 bedrooms and survey are connected the 2 floors above.

Although you mightiness not request it with a railway connected your doorstep, the location besides comes with backstage parking.

The existent owners person lived successful the spot since 2006. They bought it erstwhile they were commuting into London and, they told The Times: “It was adjacent handier coming home, due to the fact that erstwhile you’re location you’re truly home, you haven’t got to leap successful a cab oregon locomotion 10 minutes. And it’s been large for our 2 sons increasing up here. It gives them the state to leap connected the bid to spell into London with their friends.”

And arsenic for the sound of passing trains? “Monday to Friday it’s mostly precise quiet. I utilized to unrecorded successful Finchley Road successful London and the cars whizzing past were much of an contented than the trains here.”

Like the sellers, the agents judge that the location would suit different commuter looking to streamline their travel into London. “Imagine the convenience of being capable to easy question to London portion inactive enjoying the tranquillity of colony life,” they say. “There is nary excuse to miss your bid here.”