Property

With its plethora of pound shops, endless fried chicken joints and drab internet cafés, Acton has long languished in the shadows of its more attractive neighbours, Chiswick and Ealing. Yet it has a villagey potential, helped by a high street that snakes over a little hill and inhabitants who, in the words of one local estate agent, ‘haven’t got their noses up their arse’. The High Street is always being tipped for redevelopment. From there, real change won’t be long and property prices, which for now are well below those in Chiswick and Ealing, will follow suit.
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Acton’s a huge suburb that stretches out like a collection of villages, but with the High Street as the hub of the redevelopment, it’s that area’s immediate surroundings that will see the greatest impact. Poets’ Corner, a grid of roads just north of the High Street (just check the street names to know if you’re there or not: Shakespeare, Milton, and Chaucer Roads, for instance), is already gentrified but still quite reasonable . East Acton and South Acton, the immediate neighbours, which also have many nice properties, are more affordable, while West Acton with its well-priced ex-council railway cottages in Noel Road and Saxon Drive are value for money.

It’s the new…
Chiswick. Acton has the potential to be a cute, almost villagey suburb.

Best for…
Well-heeled families willing to go off-piste for the sake of a shrewd investment. As a benchmark figure, a £550,000 four-bed house in Acton would cost more like £900,000 in Chiswick. That gap is set to narrow, so invest now.

What else?
Food-wise Acton is diverse. Rasputin (265 High Street/020 8993 5802) is a lively Russian restaurant serving up huge portions while The Churchfield (Station Building, Churchfield Road/020 8992 7110) is bright and airy and serves good modern European food loved by locals. The Rocket (11-13 Churchfield Road/020 8993 6123) is an excellent gastro pub, as is The Bollo House (13-15 Bollo Lane/020 8994 6037 ).

Local stereotype
Young beer-swilling, rugby-shirted Aussies.

Your neighbours
Apart from plenty of Antipodeans on short lets, there’s a sizeable Polish and Japanese population. And BBC employees are numerous – White City is just to the east.

What to tell your friends who don’t live there
The schools are good and the delightful Gunnersbury Park is a walk away, while spectacular Kew Gardens isn’t a great deal further. Acton is extremely close to Heathrow Airport by public transport, yet not directly in the flight path, and the M4 (gateway to the south-west) is also easily accessible. Transport links across the area are good – the Piccadilly and District lines call at Acton Town, Silverlink trains at South Acton and Acton Central. The other stations (East, West and Main Line) are a bit further afield.

What to keep quiet about if you’re selling
The large and sprawling South Acton council estate (although it is due for redevelopment) and the ugly industrialised bits.

What the estate agents say
‘Acton used to be where people looked if they couldn’t afford Shepherd’s Bush or Chiswick; now it’s attracting people in its own right due to good schools, excellent transport and large affordable houses with big gardens.’ Philip Harrison, Barnard Marcus, Acton branch.

Did you know?
Acton was once known as ‘soapsud island’ for its preponderance of laundries serving West End hotels. There were as many as 205 here at the end of the nineteenth century, but after that engineering firms took over as the chief source of local employment.

Historical claim to fame
Rock goliath Pete Townshend was born and bred in these parts; and all the members of The Who except Keith Moon went to Acton County Grammar. Townshend once sang about ‘Stardom in Acton’.

Schools
The large King Fahd Academy in East Acton has made the area popular with Arab and Muslim families; there’s also a Japanese School catering for much of the Japanese population in London. State schools aren’t particularly numerous in Acton, but most perform quite well. Twyford Church of England High School is particularly successful with 84 per cent of pupils obtaining five or more GCSEs at grade A*-C.

You know you’re a local when…
You get drunk with the local Antipodeans at The Redback (264 High Street/020 8896 1458), a notorious Australian-Kiwi drinking