Last November I put on a new suit and went to view some luxury flats in the North London suburbs. Princess Park Manor on Friern Barnet Road - 'a supremely elegant residence set in thirty acres of parkland' - is a new development of 256 apartments carved out of what was once Colney Hatch Lunatic Asylum, Friern Hospital as it later became known. Despite vigorous campaigning by patient groups and mental-health professionals, Friern was closed in 1993. Most of its grounds were sold off for a retail park and townhouse development; the building itself and the land immediately surrounding it, both under conservation orders, went to a property company that specialises in 'historic' conversions. Within a few years the new owners had refurbished the building's spectacular Italianate façade, added a gym and swimming-pool, and begun to advertise one to three-bedroom apartments targeted at City workers (New Southgate railway station, just beside the Manor, is on the line to Moorgate). By the time I visited, more than two-thirds of the flats had been sold, and business was brisk.

LRB 8 May 2003 | PDF Download