Black Potts House, Windsor July 2019

mookster · Jul 15, 2019

Black Potts is a detached 19th century property with a boathouse and other ancillary buildings located on an island at the convergence of the River Thames and Jubilee River, with views towards Home Park and Windsor Castle. The island is a tree-covered triangle which is now at the mouth of the Jubilee River. It was a favourite area for fishing for Charles II, Henry Wotton and John Hales.

Visited this place on a little check-up of things fairly local to me, saw it had popped up recently so thought why not. Was a good little mooch in a fabulous setting, however the extremely close railway bridge is somewhat offputting I'd imagine - if it was me lucky enough to be the purchaser of the property I'd perhaps want to build a house a little further away from the bridge! The house is situated on an Black Potts Ait - the island which gives the house it's name, and is currently for sale.

We quickly found the slightly awkward squeeze of a way in and had a nice relaxed 45 minutes or so. There isn't much to see inside other than one fantastic fireplace in a room far too small to hold it, although it's obvious that the house was at one point much, much smaller and was at least doubled in size at some point with a large extension to one end and a smaller one to the other housing a downstairs bathroom.

Thanks for looking

Dirus_Strictus · Jul 15, 2019

What a soul less place that is - and the exterior looks quite nice.

Sam Haltin · Jul 16, 2019

Nice house. A shame about the bannisters. The fireplaces are very large compared with the size of the room it used to heat. I've seen bedrooms about the same size but with smaller fireplaces.

desbug · Jul 14, 2021

I registered specifically to comment on this page as this house is the house I grew up in - which means this was both an interesting and somewhat sad find at the same time (especially seeing all the bannisters smashed in).

The fireplace we believed had probably been obtained from Windsor Castle across the river, it's clearly too big for the house (and that is not a small room it is in). It also wasn't ever used because the flue in the bedroom above it leaked so any fire in there left a smoky bedroom.

The railway bridge is not as noisy as the planes overhead from Heathrow - there's only 4 trains an hour to Windsor Riverside. if you live there you don't notice either the trains or the plains.

The stairs to nowhere in the barn structure were not there when we lived there though, those are a later addition. (there is an upper floor, we never went up there as it needed a ladder to access)

I'm not sure I would agree with the previous poster that the house is soulless. Though that may be memory of the place when furnished and full of life speaking. Also possibly some poor decorating choices since we moved out, and the removal of flower beds etc around the outside of the house in favour of grass everywhere.

I believe proper redevelopment work is now underway on the island so hopefully this will be a home again sometime soon.

Wrench · Jul 14, 2021

desbug said:
I registered specifically to comment on this page as this house is the house I grew up in - which means this was both an interesting and somewhat sad find at the same time (especially seeing all the bannisters smashed in).

The fireplace we believed had probably been obtained from Windsor Castle across the river, it's clearly too big for the house (and that is not a small room it is in). It also wasn't ever used because the flue in the bedroom above it leaked so any fire in there left a smoky bedroom.

The railway bridge is not as noisy as the planes overhead from Heathrow - there's only 4 trains an hour to Windsor Riverside. if you live there you don't notice either the trains or the plains.

The stairs to nowhere in the barn structure were not there when we lived there though, those are a later addition. (there is an upper floor, we never went up there as it needed a ladder to access)

I'm not sure I would agree with the previous poster that the house is soulless. Though that may be memory of the place when furnished and full of life speaking. Also possibly some poor decorating choices since we moved out, and the removal of flower beds etc around the outside of the house in favour of grass everywhere.

I believe proper redevelopment work is now underway on the island so hopefully this will be a home again sometime soon.

That's a brilliant update on the history, thanks for posting