Diary isn’t just about easy laughs and shameless press releases – we occasionally offer hidden depths.
This week, in honour of the 75th anniversary of D-Day, we have a little bit of history.
Construction company Wates Group has unearthed rare images depicting a secret feat of British engineering that proved pivotal to the D-Day landings.
The Mulberry harbours (above) were artificially constructed floating docks designed and built in secret, which enabled 2.5m men, 500,000 vehicles and 4m tonnes of supplies to land off the French coast, on a stretch of land lacking any safe harbours.
Wates was among the alliance of British companies that built the harbours and, to mark the anniversary, it has worked with charity D-Day Revisited to create the film Memories of Mulberry commemorating the harbours and the servicemen and women who used them.
Chairman James Wates CBE said: “Wates has a proud history as an innovator in construction, and nowhere is this more evident than our involvement with building the Mulberry harbours.”
Watch the film here.
WiredScore unplugged
WiredScore launched a new service for the build-to-rent sector last week.
WiredScore Home will provide digital connectivity certification for the growing private rented sector. It is all, of course, very hi-tech. However, when it comes to gathering data, head of WiredScore Home, Henry Pethybridge, is a little more, well, low-tech.
In an interview with EG, he let slip that collecting information from young renter types around London’s trendy hot spots was undertaken not with an iPad and Apple Pencil, but with a trusty clipboard and pen.
Perhaps it had something to do with the poor digital connectivity around London’s streets…
No Coronation Street?
To celebrate the Queen’s official birthday this weekend (today, in case you want to send a cake), our friends at One77 Mortgages turned off their TVs for once, and indulged in a bit of royal-watching instead.
They crunched the numbers to find out whether regal street names have an affect on value. And, good news, they do. But sorry, Your Majesty, while Queen in the name scores high – third place with an average price of £426,196 across the UK – it is dwarfed by Duke, in first with an average of £549,078.
That gives Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, bragging rights in Buckingham Palace, even if Prince itself trails in a distant sixth.
It turns out most royal street names result in higher prices than the national average, except for two – Marchioness and Baroness (others on the list, high to low, were Duchess, Earl, King, Baron, Princess, Countess, Marquess and Viscount).
“Even in current market conditions, these royal roads are seeing properties sell for way above the national average,” says managing director Alastair McKee, “which is certainly something to celebrate in addition to the Queen’s birthday.”
Get organising your street parties now.
Under a hundred
Next up in the never-ending PR battle to find new things to say about house prices, online estate agent Housesimple offers us “the 17 UK towns and cities where you can buy a family house for £100k” (more specifically, those where more than 200 such homes are on the market).
And instead of building up a cut-price property portfolio of our own, Diary is sharing this list with you.
Fresh from claiming the Champions League, Liverpool takes this title too, with 628 family homes in the city currently on the market for less than £100,000. That’s well ahead of Rotherham (449) and the North East cluster of Newcastle-upon-Tyne (393), Gateshead and Hartlepool (both 379).
And the rest? Deep breath… Birkenhead, Doncaster, Middlesbrough, Leeds, Bradford, St Helens, Barnsley, Durham, Blackpool, Wigan, Sheffield, Bolton, Hull, Chesterfield and Nottingham.
Basically, if you have £100k to spend, and not a penny more, head north. Are any of these homes on royal-named streets? Diary can’t be bothered to check…
Grudge match
Football fanatic Diary was intrigued by news of a previously unheard of local derby in the West Midlands – a match last Monday between Wolverhampton’s the Mander Centre and rival Telford Shopping Centre.
Criminally, despite trumpeting the fixture in advance, the Wolverhampton Express and Star has (at time of writing) failed to update its coverage with the result and an online search has yielded no answer.
If you were there, tweet us @estatesgazette. Meanwhile, we’re daydreaming our fantasy shopping centre six-a-side league: Intu Milan. Westfield United. Up the Hammers(on)…
Notorious namesake
LaSalle and Nikal celebrated the topping out at Birmingham’s Exchange Square this week. The news came with the announcement of the rebranding for the 603-flat build-to-rent scheme under the name “Allegro”.
An interesting choice for the West Midlands’ largest BTR scheme to date – one reminiscent of another Midlands icon, perhaps not so flashy. The Austin Allegro – nicknamed the “All Aggro” – became known for its poor design and bad rust-proofing. A marketing gimmick or a spot of tempting fate?
