An Addiscombe house fire has gutted one of the area’s best-known Victorian landmarks, destroying 275 Addiscombe Road — the two-storey house known as “Ecclefechan” — after nearly a decade of bitter planning battles over its future.
The blaze broke out in the early hours of Thursday morning (17 September). Eight fire engines and around 60 firefighters were called to the scene, and the fire was not brought under control until just before 7am, after more than two hours. Neighbouring roads had to be closed into the morning rush hour.
According to the London Fire Brigade, half of the ground and first floors of the detached house were damaged by the fire and the roof was destroyed. One of the Brigade’s 32-metre turntable ladders was used as a water tower so crews could tackle the flames from above, while the Brigade’s Drone Team was deployed to give the incident commander an aerial view and to use thermal imaging cameras to identify hot spots.
Nobody was injured. With the exception of squatters, nobody has lived in the building for at least eight years. The London Fire Brigade says the cause of the fire is under investigation.
The night of the Addiscombe house fire
Station Commander Tom Sharp, who was at the scene, said: “Firefighters worked hard to bring the fire under control as quickly as possible.”
The building had stood empty and neglected for years. Photographs taken inside a couple of years ago showed the house stripped to bare boards and left derelict, overgrown and deteriorating despite years of campaigns by local residents to save it.
Reaction among neighbours was a mixture of anger and sadness. One concerned resident told Inside Croydon: “Owners and developers should be held responsible when something like this happens” — a sentiment echoed by many as firefighters continued to damp down the embers.
Planning battle behind the Addiscombe house fire
Ecclefechan had no architectural or heritage protections through the listing process, but it became the focus of a long preservation battle led by ASPRA, the Addiscombe and Shirley Park Residents’ Association. Residents opposed what they saw as inappropriate redevelopment schemes, with ASPRA at one point describing a proposal as “greedy vandalism on a grand scale”.
According to Croydon Council records, the property had been the subject of close to 30 planning applications since 2020. Not all were refused — in 2024 the developers even won an appeal against the council’s decision to refuse permission for a three-storey building with nine flats.
The owners, Marlpark 275 CRO Ltd — run by brothers Abbas and Habib Datoo and registered at an address in Scarbrook Road in Croydon town centre — bought the property in July 2019 for £1.2 million. The irony, as locals see it, is that after years of unsuccessful applications fought against strong public opposition, the owners have actually held a valid planning permission for the site since 2022: permission for demolition of the existing house and its replacement with a new three-storey detached house with a basement, re-applied for and granted when the original permission was about to expire last year.
There is no suggestion of any wrongdoing connected to the fire by the property’s owners.
Despite already holding that consent, Marlpark submitted yet another application in April this year — this time seeking outline consent for demolition of the house and the erection of a four-storey building comprising a nursing home for 30 to 60 residents, plus a basement. The proposed building would be at least twice the scale of the now-destroyed Ecclefechan, and is unlikely to win over residents of the neighbouring bungalows. The council’s public consultation on those proposals remains open until 1 October.
There now appears to be no alternative to demolition of what remains of the building — bringing the long tug-of-war over one of Addiscombe’s most fought-over Victorian houses to a bleak and sudden end.
Reporting based on Inside Croydon, with statements from the London Fire Brigade.
