A JEWEL-LIKE development of four houses around a gravel-crunching square helps underline the enormous attraction of one of Canterbury’s most elegant streets – New Dover Road. takes a turn around Portland Square.

For those who bother to walk it, and if you live here, you will make time to walk it, New Dover Road is a joy. There is not a mean building along its lower reaches.

This is the road where the city’s well-to-do liked to build their town mansions. Set back on either side are substantial piles, partially screened from us humble pedestrians by generous amounts of trees.

Even the smaller, half timbered villas have an air of comfort and a promise of a decent size garden into which to dive after a hard day in the office or boardroom.

On a more mundane level, it is also one of the very few streets in Canterbury that offers easy access to the A2 coast or London-bound.

Add the fact that the city’s amenities are all within a five or 10-minute walk, and the value of a location such as Portland Square, just up past the Best Western Hotel, becomes obvious.

The square is set back down its own gated drive from New Dover Road, so well insulated from the sound of passing traffic.

Developers Oakley New Homes, who have a reputation for small, quality projects that fit into their surroundings with great aplomb, have put up just four houses on the site: two crisp, brick and stone buildings that marry Georgian proportions to Tudor details.

Black cast iron railings and crenellated bay windows give them a smart, stylish air.

Of the larger two, five reception, four bedroom, three bathroom homes, one remains for sale.

The smart black and white diamond pattern tiled floor in the hall leads into the living room, with its bay window to the front and stone surround fireplace with gas fire.

A door leads through to a small study just off, ideal as a bolt-hole for those needing both respite from the family, and yet immediate access when disagreements over TV channels escalate.

Another door leads through to the first of three offset spaces that trickle cunningly from dining room through kitchen/breakfast room to a beautifully airy garden room.

The kitchens are all quietly smart jobs, very efficient, very unfussy, however, still resolutely domestic, without that clinical stainless steel surgical ward atmosphere that most minimalist kitchens exude so menacingly.

The garden room, for once, does make the most of the garden, with the light flooding in through an expanse of windows, and the mature planting outside giving an impression of being cheek by jowl with woodland.

There is also plenty of lawn for those long hot summers in the city.

On the first floor is the master bedroom with en suite bathroom with bath and separate shower cubicle, wc and wash basin, all contemporary styled white sanitary ware, and dressing room, and the second bedroom, also with en suite and dressing room.

The two remaining bedrooms on the second floor are equally large, and are separated by the shower room.

The four-bedroom homes opposite open onto the living room, a spacious, sprawling room looking onto the square.

At the rear is the kitchen, again a model of kitchen planning in which it is possible for two people to potter without always getting in each other’s way.

A utility room leads to a downstairs cloakroom and the garden.

On the first floor are two bedrooms, a family bathroom, and a smaller room, possibly a study or spare bedroom.

The second floor is given over to the master bedroom with en suite shower room with wc and wash hand basin.

Entrance is via a gated tree-lined drive, and the square itself is flanked by trees that effectively screen it from its neighbours without robbing it of light.

Other details include traditional radiators to all areas, generous sun terraces, fully-tiled bathrooms with ceramics individually selected from Italy, security system, external lighting to front and rear, and good size garages.