Harry Styles (second from the right) and the rest of One Direction at a recent TV show appearance.

One Direction, who despite not winning 2010′s X-Factor had by mid-201 been signed up with Simon Cowell’s record label and last year released their debut album. This was followed by a tour of Australia and the US, helping each of the band earn approximately £6 million.

But while the group was on the road Harry made time to develop a taste for lavish homes. In April this year he and band mate Louis Tomlinson rented a luxurious apartment in Friern Barnet, North London, paying £5,000 a month for the three bedroom property which had previously been rented by Ashley Cole.

But Harry soon realised the value of owning versus renting and snapped up a £575,000 apartment  in East London before stepping up the property ladder to his latest purchase, a four bedroom, three bathroom historic house in Hampstead which he has just bought for £2.95 million.

The property is ideal for a fast rising global star like Harry – it is surrounded by tall walls at street level, offers two large lounges for partying and is hidden down a private road a long way from the prying lenses of paparazzi and his fanatical female fans.

Pictures of Harry Styles’ new home:

There is a strong positive start, a few fences to jump and a smooth finish but most important of all we want originality; which means both designing and manufacturing bespoke items – like this chandelier, for example.

Within a 10,000 sq ft house, for example, that means an unending line of tradesmen arriving, each clutching their box of specialists tools, to achieve our goal. Plus we have to place between 60 and 90 purchase orders with bespoke manufacturers to fill a house that size.

But while many like to use the word supplier, I prefer ‘artisan’ because what separates them from the rest is the immense pride in what they do.

This can be tricky though. There are moments when we have designed and drawn an item, sent it to the chosen artisan who then ‘makes decisions’ without communicating them back to us, for whatever reason.

This is usually fine but there have been moments when I have taken a sharp intake of breath, knowing that it isn’t exactly what I might have told the client to expect.

By rights, with signed off drawings, the suppliers should not change it but sometimes a little bit of artistic interpretation can make for an interesting result.

But will the client notice?  Will they mind? Experience has taught me to talk about it and check that we are all on the same page.
I recently had an incident in a luxury home where the Site Manager – who is tasked with making a lot of decisions all day long, took it upon himself to change a wall mirror to beveled edging rather than polished.

Rather than either of them checking the drawings, he made the decision on the spur of the moment that it would look better to bevel the edges.  His opinion wasn’t wrong – he just had not considered that unless a wall is absolutely true, and with the restraint of time and the end result, that it actually took four days instead of one to get it right.

Read more diary entries by Sarah.

The most obvious choice was The Shard, the 1,020ft skyscraper next to London Bridge station (visible in this photo, top left), although it would have been an expensive vista; apartments on its residential floors are going for between £30m and £50m. Or perhaps No.1 Hyde Park, where the most affordable one-bedroom apartments go for £5 million plus.

But now, following the official launch last week, you have Central Park in Lewisham. On one of its top floors (from where this picture was taken) apartments are available for just £300,000 so the development, which is a 20 minute commuter from London Bridge and central London, represents a saving of at least £29,700,000 or £1.485m a minute of journey time, when compared to The Shard..

Central Park’s homes, which are hard not to rename Central Perk, will eventually come with access to a cafe (but no Phoebe) and are affordable compared to similar development in nearby areas such as (more fashionable) Deptford.

The site for the development, which is in its second phase, is an unremarkable sprawling 1970s-era council estate that’s being knocked down block by block and its tenants offered apartments within its affordable housing sections – while the rest are being sold at low-ish prices.

For example, they start at £222,500 for a one bedroom apartment while two bedroom flats start at £275,000 which means, given the average price for a flat in SW10 is £329,000, property that’s 32% and 16% cheaper respectively.

Developer Family Mosaic and its selling agent Savills are aware of this – and they are doing their best to attract young first time buyers to the development rather landlords looking for multiple buy-to-let purchases through prices that are more ‘realistically priced’. More information from www.centralparkliving.co.uk or the Savills website.

No.39 Stanhope Gardens may now be a careworn three-storey Victorian semi being auctioned on the 20^th September by agent Savills with a guide price of £1.2 million, but the bricks and mortar – and the intriguing belongings of its previous owner also for sale with the property – will mean much more to the Pink Floyd fans.

During September 1963 bassist and singer Roger Waters moved in to the property with drummer Nick Mason followed by David Gilmour, Richard Wright and finally in 1965 by Syd Barrett, who shared a room with Waters.

Their two years spent at the property had a strong influence on the group, who were inspired by their live-in landlord, musician and Horney College of Art lecturer Mike Leonard, who also went on to pioneer the band’s unusual light shows.

The original members of Pink Floyd (pictured above), who for a while were known informally as Leonard’s Lodgers so strong were their links to the property, are said to have developed their style while staying at the house, and picked up some musical influences from Leonard including his passion for unusual instruments and psychedelia.

Today, several mementos of Leonard’s long tenure at the house remain including a large but rusting xylophone and several of the effects units that gave Pink Floyd its distinctive sound. The surviving members of Pink Floyd would also recognise its original wood panelling, sunk bath and several large wall mirrors and an unsuaul speaker system built into the eaves of the roof.

The property also has another connection to Pink Floyd. Drummer Nick Mason, who in 1965 bought an old Aston Martin while living at the property, told AutoTrader magazine recently that the hood belonging to the vehicle is probably buried somewhere in the 60ft garden at the rear of the house.

But this property is not the only one fop sale with Floyd connections. The home of sound engineer-turned-musician Alan Parsons is for sale at the moment in East Sussex and is where several bands including Pink Floyd worked on albums with him. And a three bedroom flat in Notting Hill is for sale within a development built where the London Free School used to stand, and where the group rehearsed while living in neighbouring Highgate.

A road lined mostly with new homes in his home town of Paisley in Scotland is soon to be named after him while at the same time a former house has come on the market a short drive away, overlooking the Firth of Clyde.

Properties for sale on Gerry Rafferty Drive (pictured, bottom) start at £130,000 but are available via a shared ownership scheme for under £70,000, while the other Rafferty-connected property (pictured, below) is in a different league financially and is on the market for £350,000.

The vendor, who wishes to remain anonymous, says he has paperwork that proves the singer-songwriter, who died last year aged 63 in Bournemouth, rented this coastal home with his first wife Carla before they moved south in 1979 as Rafferty’s success and wealth increased, dividing their time between a farmhouse on the Kent/Sussex borders and a Queen Anne house in Hampstead, north London. But in 1989 Rafferty bought the property, perhaps as a momento of happier days with Carla, before selling it two years later following the couple’s divorce.

His daughter, Martha, has been in contact with the property’s current owner to confirm she remembers living at the house and the colourful episodes her father, who had a long term drinking problem, created. This includes bottles of expensive red wine being thrown by Rafferty from the back garden into the stream below.

Rafferty’s former home, following substantial refurbishment, is now a stunning four-bedroom modernist villa and is off the A78 in Skelmorlie on Scotland’s west coast. It includes a front terrace (pictured, above) offering sweeping vistas over the Firth of Clyde and, in the distance, the mouth of Loch Striven. Photographs of Rafferty taken outside the house have been used for publicity purposes in the past, including within artwork for several record sleeves.

It was while living in Scotland that Rafferty enjoyed his first taste of success with an initial solo album – Can I Have My Money Back? – although it wasn’t until moving south that his most famous album, City to City, including the hit Baker Street, made him a global star and helped him to sell over ten million records during his career.

Rafferty had a long trail of addresses he called home. He sold his south of England farmhouse after divorcing Carla in 1990 and in the late noughties sold his London home and also bought a  property in California where he lived with his daughter Martha for a time. He later returned to Europe and rented a home first in Ireland and later in Upton near Poole, Dorset with his final partner, Enzina Fuschini, an Italian artist and designer.

But what really gets many players worried is where to buy a home with their ample transfer fees and celebrity mansion-sized salaries, given they could be playing in a different region, country or even continent next season.

While players such as Wayne Rooney stay loyal to their club throughout their careers and buy palatial piles near to their home ground, international players who change allegiances more face a greater conundrum.

French former Manchester United defender Mikael Silvestre is finding this out the hard way now that he no longer needs Knights Keep, his quirky and Harry Potteresque  mansion in the celebrity-strewn ‘golden triangle’ town of Alderley Edge in Cheshire.

Signed in 1999 he waited six years at Manchester United to buy a property with his wife Severine, and Knights Keep cost him £2 million, a purchase that coincided with his contract renewal at the club for a further four years, his ears burning from positive comments by manager Alex Ferguson.

But despite this, he transferred to Arsenal in the summer of 2008, and in 2009 put up Knights Keep for sale at £4.5 million, perhaps tired by the longer commute to the Emirates stadium. Sadly, it failed to find a buyer.

After the 2009-2010 season Silvestre had even less need for the property. After Arsenal released him, he took up an offer from German club Werder Bremen, which he left at the end of last season and is now – it is believed – looking for new opportunities.

Knights Keep is now back on the market for £4.2 million, reflecting the challenges of today’s property market, even though Alderley Edge is one of Cheshire’s most affluent towns, home in the past to other footballers including Gareth Barry and Peter Crouch.

What few realise is how both international cricketers have little reason to bemoan their enforced time off after losing their captaincies.

Both Vaughan and Strauss have been been busy piling their money (in Vaughan’s case from BBC Test Match Special commentary appearances) into the Barbados property market – not a huge surprise given how much time they’ve both spent in the region.

While still captain of the England test team Vaughan bought a £1 million luxury three-bedroom villa within the island’s famous Royal Westmoreland golfing resort and then, after resigning, traded up to a larger, four bedroom property on the same resort but within its more upmarket Palm Grove quarter. He also bought a property on the Venezuelan island of Margarita.

Andrew Straus owns property on St Lucia at the Freedom Bay resort, where even before his departure from the Test team he was hoping to “spend some time with my family relaxing and soaking-up some Caribbean sun”, something he will have more time to do now.

And luckily for both, the Caribbean property market is performing well, unlike the England cricket team under the later stages of their leadership.

Local agents says Barbados, from a property perspective, is the Caribbean equivalent of London’s Chelsea or Mayfair and is booming as its reputation for luxury resorts like Royal Westmoreland (pictured, below) – where Wayne Rooney and Steve McClaren also have villas – has kept the high net worth crowd rolling in.

Local agent Keiron Kelly of Chesterton thinks this explains why the island’s more upmarket areas such as its West coast and beach front areas have so far seen only slightly declines in price as the international credit crunch has swirled around Barbados.

If this is all enough to persuade you to buy on the island then Vaughan’s former villa is also for sale for at £928,000, perhaps the ultimate plaything of a cricket fan who wants to bowl over friends with their holiday home.

Owners have access to the world class amenities on Royal Westmoreland such as the award winning golf course, tennis, gymnasium and a beach club at nearby Mullins Beach. And you can hire his villa too for a more reasonable(ish) £650 a night in low season and £1070 a night in high season.

Vaughan made his Test debut for England in 1999 before going on to captain his country 51 times. Known for his shrewd captaincy, the pinnacle of his career came in 2005 when he oversaw England’s 2-1 Ashes victory over Australia.

By chance we went for a wander to place a bet on some races and found ourselves near a crowd who seemed to be waiting for something to happen.

That ‘something’ was the Queen and Prince Philip en route to the races having looked at the horses.  We must have been just a few feet away.  Extraordinary.  I was really impressed at their agility given their age.

Now, let’s talk outfits, which prompted acres of coverage in the press – as usual – when some ‘undressed’ ladies were turned away. The outfits were more impressive than last year and there was a move to ‘smarten up’ following some really unfortunate behaviour last year by the band stand.  Which I witnessed.

What I saw then was eye opening.  The quantity of fabric in some of the outfits did not qualify them as ‘dresses’. ’Dressette’ would be more accurate… so the dress police were justified in their entry refusals.

Interior design is about taste too. Many think you have to throw money at interiors design – and indeed many expensively attired executive are extraordinary to behold, but these days style is possible on a shoestring with a bit of effort and DIY.

And the sales are on! It is far easier now to create a really colourful, happy space without spending a fortune.  Good taste may not increase the value of your home but it will create the best first impression and help a quick sale. If you check out PrimeLocation’s Make the Most of Your Home before putting a house on the market, which include some tips from me.

And I’m putting my money where my mouth is. While we still haven’t found a buyer for our old home – read the article about it here – I’m busy overseeing the build of new house. The basics have been built and we are ready for the next phase.  I am trying not to change my mind on bathroom fittings and the kitchen – again – and it’s made me realizes how it is much easier working for other people.

To take a break from this I recently spent a few days in Aldeburgh, Suffolk, now the home of my parents and where when I was a child we had a holiday home.  We moved around every two years with my father’s job bothin the UK and abroad but Aldeburgh remained a constant throughout.  With time it has evolved, but the main town always looks the same as the businesses come and go.  I wish we could say the same for everywhere.

Such wealth will not be a surprise to anyone who knows Osborne’s parents, who are one half of Britain’s best-known upmarket furnishings company Osborne & Little.

But what their unusual property transactions reveal is the extraordinary nature of the market around their two addresses, which are in the heart of Notting Hill’s most desirable grid of streets between Holland Park and Ladbroke Grove but away from the less polished Portobello Road and its famous market (pictured, below).

If you want to buy the Osbornes’ six-bedroom former home (pictured, above) then, although it’s listed as ‘price on application’ the Daily Mail reckons it will sell for £15m – £5m less than the £10m the Osbornes paid for their new house ten doors down the road.

The house they are selling may be the most expensive in the area but very few within this Notting Hill grid go for less than £5 million and the most basic two-bedroom apartments start at £650,000 while you’ll have to drop down to a one-bedroom to find a home for under £500,000.

You will, nevertheless, be paying for glitzy neighbours. TV presenter Ruby Wax lives on an adjacent street, as does musician Damon Albarn plus both Jade Jagger and Stella McCartney have flagship shops locally, if you need to step out for a party dress or some jewellery. Hungry? Then Mr Christian’s, every Notting Hill A-listers favourite deli, is nearby on Elgin Crescent.

The average house price for this area is £1.36 million, research by property website Zoopla shows, an astonishing figure given that Notting Hill, according to estate agent Savills, was in the mid-1980s “beyond the fringe” but is now “prime London” and the eighth most expensive area of the capital per square foot, ahead of St John’s Wood and even Marylebone.

Caroline Foord of Knight Frank says Notting Hill started to “boom on the back of the ‘Big Bang’ City shake-up during the mid to late 1980s” and that today houses with access to communal gardens are most highly prized among buyers with families.

But it wasn’t always so idyllic. During the 1990s many cabbies would only reluctantly take you to Notting Hill or neighbouring Westbourne Grove after dark, and back in the 1960s the area was famous for its exploitative slum landlords including, most famously, Peter Rachman.

Today, prices have dropped a little in Nottingham Hill in recent months, but prices are still five percent up year-on-year, and if you had bought here five years ago then your home is now worth 22.5% more, Savills reckons. Something the Osbornes are probably acutely aware of.

The 69-year-old actor, who says he wants to spend more time with his wife Linda (pictured with him, below) and his family before his condition deteriorates, is best known for his long career playing gangsters and psychopaths in a run of successful films including, recently, Made in Dagenham (2010). But he is best known as for his roles as Smee in Hook (1991), Eddy Valiant in Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (1988), Harold in The Long Good Friday (1980) and George in Mona Lisa (1986).

Like many celebrity homes his Sussex retreat offers seclusion and privacy away from prying eyes up a private lane overlooking its 13 acres of lawns and ground, to be found some 20 minutes by car north east of Lewes. And Hoskins’ home has been expensively refurbished inside too including a high-spec bespoke kitchen (pictured below) in its eastern roundel on the ground floor.

The main property has three bedrooms and a bathroom on the second floor but if this sounds a little squeezed for £895,000 then there’s also a separate one-bedroom cottage-cum-garage at the side of the property, as well as a paddock, tennis court, garden machinery store, two ponds, woods and a swimming pool.

The property’s only neighbours are two large houses both with huge stables attached plus a fruit farm. Even the nearest village, Chiddingly, is a very quiet affair with just a pub for entertainment but no shops – for most of the year, that is.

Because having an A-list film star living nearby isn’t the first time Chiddingly has been linked to movies. The 1983 film Charles Dickens and Great Expectations was filmed in and around the village and the film premiered at the village’s annual arts festival, now in its 34^th year which in September this year is being headlined by comedian Hardeep Singh Kohli.