This is why 50 Oxford Gardens is a minor marvel, a Victorian house complete with all its trim, not just cornices and ceiling roses but spectacular ironwork and glazed floor tiles. What’s more, it’s part of the still intact estate laid out by the St Quintin family beside the 1864 extension to the Metropolitan Railway from Paddington to Hammersmith via Ladbroke Grove. This area is becoming very fashionable, with film-makers and bankers competing for every house up for sale. Portobello Market is just a couple of streets away, but here the streets are wide and lined with trees.

The great attraction is the large number of double-fronted and paired houses built along Oxford and Cambridge Gardens and Bassett Road — about 200 in all. Their elegance and consistency suggest that they were built to the designs of the St Quintins’ architect, Henry Currey, creator of numerous buildings in Eastbourne and Buxton for the 6th Duke of Devonshire. Currey added a real touch of grandeur with the broad flights of steps leading up to the front door in the manner of brownstones in New York.

The splendour of these houses comes from their double fronts with matching bay windows on either side of the columned entrances. The bay windows are topped by chunky Victorian balustrades and the first-floor windows have charming little shields or escutcheons instead of keystones. Currey’s front door is solid enough for a bank, with handsomely studded panels. It opens into a hall that retains a full complement of colourful Victorian tiles laid in a bold lattice pattern.

Instead of the usual front and back rooms with twin fireplaces linked by double doors, Currey created grand saloons with windows at both ends and a single central fireplace. In true High Victorian style, these are arched, not square, allowing a larger area of ornamental carving.

The windows at both ends descend almost to the floor, filling the rooms with light. They are of plate glass with distinctive S-shaped sash “horns”. The dining room across the hall also has a fine ceiling rose and a fireplace cleverly simulated to look like black marble.

One bonus is that the shallow back extension has been extended beyond those of other houses in the street to make a very spacious kitchen with a bow window overlooking the garden. Steps lead down to a broad, very pretty garden laid out by Arabella Lennox-Boyd with matching pergolas in both corners.

The staircase, at right angles to the hall, has more splendid cast-iron railings set not on the steps but attached to them — each baluster is in the shape of a giant paperclip and is designed to create an open airy look while ensuring that there is not enough space for a child to fall through. The handsome mahogany rail swoops down to a corkscrew column on the bottom step with a base as elaborate as an altar candlestick.

The main bedroom runs from front to back with a bathroom over the entrance hall and another over the kitchen, which opens onto a generous terrace with a glorious view over neighbouring gardens — a “borrowed landscape” with splendid mature trees. With a sitting room overlooking the street, the whole first floor is in effect a single master bedroom suite. Four further bedrooms are on the second floor. Here is a final flourish: a stepladder leads to the attic, which has a gym-cum-games room.

The basement has a handsome library and is also equipped as a self-contained flat. With its original interior so intact, 50 Oxford Gardens should be a listed building. Alas, with the present snail’s pace of listing this won’t happen for half a century.

Price: £5 million, Savills 020-7535 3300

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