A fine 'bone to pick

The buzz is back in Marylebone. Its attractive High Street - nearly half of its buildings are listed - seemed to lose its way and some of its character in the Eighties. In the past three years, however, the place has smartened up.

Only 10 minutes' walk from hectic Oxford Street, Marylebone High Street now offers a specialist cheese shop, a French grocery store, a fishmongers, a Sunday farmers' market and a range of one-off shops selling fashion, kitchenware and furniture. And dotted liberally among them are good-quality cafés and restaurants.

Much of Marylebone is owned by a single family. The four daughters of Howard de Walden, one of Britain's richest men, inherited his estate when he died in 1999. The property dynasty's influence is seen throughout, in the alluring Georgian street plan and impressive architecture. The area has a wonderfully central location but also an air of having only just been discovered by discerning house-hunters.

The de Walden estate stretches from Wigmore Street to Marylebone Road. In the Seventies, rents began to climb and many of the smaller, more interesting shops were driven out. By the Nineties, before Andrew Ashenden became the estate's new chief executive, even Sainsbury's and Woolworths had made their excuses and left.

There were at least 50 boarded-up shops and only charity outlets were prospering. Ashenden needed to produce results but was determined not to go down the identikit high-street route so common elsewhere in London. Marylebone does have its obligatory Gap, Monsoon and Starbucks, of course, but the estate has been able to control the mix of new businesses coming into the area because it owns so much of the property., particularly on the west side of the High Street. Attracting a Conran store at the Marylebone Road end and a Waitrose to the other, helped set a tone.

"The Conran shop is their second most successful store in the UK," says Ashenden. "It's upmarket, high quality and has a style that appeals to our sort of residents. It's very much the focus of the street."

But small shops and independent food retailers are vital to any high street. Ashenden says the estate takes a long-term view of rents: "Rents have gone up three-fold here even in the past five years and we do let at market rents, but where we're keen to attract a particular tenant we are flexible. We're trying to make Marylebone an area where independent traders can come and operate very interesting small shops."

Walk beneath Waitrose's magnificent Victorian clock - Ashenden wanted a highstreet clock and Waitrose happened to have the very thing in storage - and you are drawn by upmarket fashion names, from Ronit Zilkha to Agnès b or by shopwindows offering exciting designs for the home, from Divertimenti kitchenware to Shaker furniture.

Shoppers can discover the ribbons shop VV Rouleaux, and an art gallery, Thompson's, which specialises in contemporary British painting. Survivors from the lean days include Martin Green Menswear and travel books specialist Daunt, now a large general bookshop.

Established restaurants and cafés - Campana, Patisserie Valerie - rub shoulders with successful new ventures, such as Providores. Conran has opened the Orrery, while Odin's and Langan's are still going strong feeding the army of doctors who pour in at lunchtimes from nearby Harley Street.

At Moxon Street, with the arrival of La Fromagerie, a specialist cheese shop, and with new premises under construction for a greengrocer and a butcher, there are the beginnings of a fresh-food centre, particularly as a Sunday farmers' market now runs in a nearby car park from 10am to 2pm.

Retailers value the mix. Tim Lamb of Shaker, which closed its King's Road shop to expand in Marylebone, says: "The estate has got the atmosphere right, it's quite interesting having a furniture shop next to a fishmongers."

Thompson's moved from Mayfair and "it's been tremendous", according to manager Sonia Harman. "Thirty to 40 per cent of our sales are to new clients. We do sell a lot to people on their way back from Waitrose."

Homebuyers have been quick to notice the transformation. Marylebone, which includes Harley Street, used to be seen, says Tim Fairweather of local estate agents Sturridge Fairweather, as " predominantly a place where doctors lived. But now it's attracting a new generation of buyers, younger people who want to live around that sort of street."

And, according to Joseph Wise of Oakleys, who has been selling Marylebone properties for 20 years, "It's back to the old days. It's become very fashionable again and prices have risen." A two-bedroom flat fetches £450,000 or more, while three bedrooms cost from £550,000 to £600,000.

There is only one fly in the ointment - Marylebone is in the congestion charge zone, discouraging shoppers with cars. "Everyone's noticed a big dip-off," maintains Shaker's Tim Lamb. Retailers are considering mounting a campaign to remind people that the charge does not apply at weekends.