London’s hottest houseboat goes up for sale for £1.8m

But this 1950s Dutch ship has now been converted into one of the most stylish – and expensive – floating houses London has ever seen.

And for £1.8 million, this most unusual family home can be all yours.

Bosco, which comes with a 120-year berth at Oyster Pier, Battersea, has just gone up for sale with estate agents at The Modern House.

Bosco’s current owners are Claire and Alistair Langhorn, directors of Lab Architects, who bought the ship as an empty shell in 2016. “We saw this huge space and thought: what can we do with it?” said Claire.

The couple already had some experience converting boats: their office is based on another ship docked at Cadogan Pier in Chelsea.

However, their home was a flat in Fulham and they had no specific plans to leave.

“The point is we don’t really have a permanent position at Cadogan Pier, and a few years ago there was a point where we were genuinely concerned that we might have to leave – we could end up with a boat and nowhere to go so to speak Claire explained.

Claire, 50, and Alistair, 51, decided to insure against this possibility by buying the Battersea berth – and renting it out unless they needed it. Then Bosco came up for sale, and since they could put her somewhere, they decided to buy her and renovate it.

“We weren’t planning on living on a boat at the time,” Claire said. “We thought we might do it and sell it, but in the end we inevitably designed it as a place that we would want to have for ourselves. We had outgrown our flat, the kids were teenagers and we thought it was going to be a big adventure. ”

The recovery of the boat took nine months and Claire, Alistair, Honor, now 18, and Fred, 16, moved in in 2018.

At 2,150 m², Bosco is the same size as a typical three-bedroom house.

And with her steel-and-glass winter garden perched on a mirrored deck plinth, she’s also the antithesis of traditional canal boat chic: Forget cramped spaces and garish color schemes, this houseboat is an exercise in neutrals and stylish finishes.

Small luxuries include a cinema room tucked into the bow of the boat, while the winter garden’s four doors can be fully opened in summer to create an indoor-outdoor space.

Below decks, the steel hold now contains a master bedroom – with a bathroom clad in aubergine-coloured polished plaster – plus two more children’s bedrooms, a family bathroom, a living room and a study.

With Honor off to college, the couple have decided their nautical adventure is over and plan to return to Fulham.

“Life by the river is wonderful—peaceful and calm, and a little bit otherworldly,” Claire said. “But we don’t need that much space anymore, and living on a boat is very different from living on land. It’s a commitment.

“Most of the people on the river are real characters, so it’s not like living in a flat and closing the front door behind you. There is constant movement and you have to deal with practical things like things washing up around you.”

There are also ongoing costs to consider. Although Bosco has a long-term berth, her future owners will have to cover annual fees, including service charges, of around £8,000.