Fassett Road

Albert Villa is a four-bedroom end-of-terrace house on Fassett Road, directly opposite Fassett Square, with a south-facing garden at the back and a south-facing room on the top floor. Hackney's conservation area appraisal says the architecture and form of Fassett Square and Fassett Road were the basis for Albert Square in EastEnders.

The Victoria County History records that the Massie family had planned the western half of Fassett Square by 1853, and names William Hodson, a builder living at Graham House, as responsible for part of the square. The appraisal is dated November 1997, the year the council designated the Graham Road and Mapledene Conservation Area, and it says many buildings there date from the 1860s and 1870s and were put up by small builders working from published pattern books.

Inside, the hall opens to a through reception room with working divider doors, Victorian floorboards and black column radiators. On the lower ground floor a front reception room adjoins the kitchen, which a local joiner hand finished in a shaker style, with a range cooker, a pantry and a coffee station. A study or snug at the rear opens to the garden through two sets of doors, and wide oak boards run across the whole floor over underfloor heating. The renovation put new insulation between each floor beneath the original boards and new fire doors on every level.

The upper floors have three bedrooms, freshly replastered, and the top floor has been redesigned as a bedroom that could work as a home office, with views over the neighboring gardens and treetops. The first-floor shower room doubles as a laundry room, and the second-floor family bathroom has a rolltop bath. Wilton Way is a few minutes' walk away, with the bakery Violet and several restaurants, and London Fields station runs the Overground direct to Liverpool Street.