KCL Julian Markham House Review

One Student's Experiences

Reviewed at £249 pw 2018/9

Central location and close to campus,

what's not to love?

A lot, to be honest.

Julian Markham House is one of the student halls of King's College London, outsourced to Unite Students. Located in Elephant & Castle above the Dragon Castle restaurant, it's just a 25 minutes walk to either Guy's or Waterloo Campus, with the tube station 5 minutes away for access elsewhere via the Bakerloo line or Northern lines.

Previously £169 pw, the bump up to £259 pw for 2018/9 came with a complete renovation of the building, and on paper it seemed perfect. Despite the rent increase it was still one of the most competitively priced KCL halls in the area, and due to it's proximity to Guy's campus and the local high street, I was excited to move in.

However, that's pretty much where the good news ends.

Summary

Positives

Great Location

Close to Campus

Negatives

Incomplete/ Broken Facilities

Silverfish Infestation

Staff don't care

The Area

Elephant & Castle is an area split between the old past of the inner city, and the glass-clad high rises of the future. Julian Markham House sits roughly on the boundary between these two personas, where a short walk down the road can feel like an entirely different area.

In terms of shops, this is a wonderful location. A large Sainsbury's is just 5 minutes away, and an equally large Morissons is 8 minutes in the opposite direction. There is also a large shopping center with a WHSmith's and an assortment of both chain and independent stores, however this is due to be demolished and replaced as part of the area's regeneration programme.

At night however, the area changes drastically. Police and ambulance sirens are a frequent occurrence, enough to disturb sleep and study, and the area around the shopping centre takes on the characteristic smell of a certain 7 fingered leaf.

All in all however, it is a pleasant area especially in relation to the price, and honestly the location of Julian Markham is it's strongest asset.

Moving In Day

The first red flag came on Moving In day, where the building was still being renovated. Neither the reception, laundry room, or common room had been built yet and so everyone had to enter from the back entrance and up a short few stairs to reach the lift and their rooms. A short delay in the build schedule, they said, and we all understood that at times deadlines may not be met, and we all went about unpacking, excited to be living away from home.

The Flat: Room

My first impression of the place were mixed. On the one hand, I had a nice new room with plenty of storage space, and a spacious kitchen that could easily double as the flat's social space. The downside however is the questionable decision to overhaul and renovate all the rooms and facilities bar the en suite itself - the age of which clearly showing through its discoloured white plastic-shell construction.

The room is furnished with a minimalist styling (read: cheap), with an all white decor and dark grey accents. Storage, as mentioned, is great with a small wardrobe , 2 large cavities under the bed, 8 cubby shelves on the wall, 2 sets of draws and another set of small shelves under the desk. There are 4 power outlets with 2 USB ports rated for 5V/2.1A, located near the desk on one side only. This makes charging your phone from the bed impossible unless you buy a super long USB cable, or sleep in the wrong way on the bed (feet towards the headboard).

A single large window dominates the room and almost fills the entire back wall which lets in a lot of natural light to the desk, but judging by the discoloration due to moisture damage it seems to be untouched along with the old bathroom. It is flanked by two large pin-boards for timetables or photos, although due to the one-sided nature of the plugs you'll most likely only use the one closest to your laptop and hence the outlets, leaving the other one lonely and empty.

The desk is my biggest design gripe, as it is spans the width of the room yet is super short (shallow in the Y axis) meaning you can't have a laptop with a notepad or A4 textbook in front of you. I tried working around this by using a smaller notepad of B5 size, but this meant I couldn't open the laptop screen up to a comfortable angle due to the window frame. In the end having the notepad on the side was too alien for me so I committed to going to the notoriously packed New Hunt's library, a necessity whose cause is now clear.

The en-suite is visually disappointing, a stark contrast to the modern furnishing of the room with yellowing plastic and rust behind every mirror surface and screw head. The cheapness and age of the plastic shell is exemplified by looking at the sink basin, whose weight has caused the entire plastic wall to warp and so that it sits at a slight downwards angle. Lightly pressing down on the sink basin or sitting on the throne also warps the walls and causes them to creak under load.

The shower cubical is decent, if above average with good water pressure and a little corner shelf to hold bathroom products. There is also a small corner shelf at the sink, good for holding a toothbrush and toothpaste but anything more and you'll have to store them on the selves in the room.

The bed is a decent double with a reasonable mattress, which allows you to sleep starfish or to double up ;) the floor space is also big enough to accommodate an air mattress should it be required.

The Flat: Kitchen

The kitchen is a good size, with a small social area consisting of a sofa and a coffee table. There's an electric hob, oven, fridge and a microwave provided (meaning you'll have to bring your own kettle and toaster). The storage is decent with a drawer and 2 cupboards each, although fridge space is at a serious premium, with just one small shelf each in a 5 person flat, which boggles my mind considering they give 2 fridges for a 6 person flat.

Actual cooking is alright, with 4 spots on the hob and 2 racks in the oven. Annoyingly however, the hobs only stay on for 15 minutes at a time (seemingly a safety feature) but it means making anything more substantial than an egg necessitates you turn the hob off and back on again. No instruction sheet for the oven was provided either so I still have no clue with the icons and settings mean. I just stick to the icon with the fan but your mileage may vary.

Finally, there is also a small utility cupboard with a mop, bucket, dustpan, vacuum, ironing board and iron.

The Flat: Deal-Breaker Problems

There are a few major issues with the flat (besides the premium fridge space) which makes what seems like a decent experience decidedly shit.

1. There is a prolific Silverfish infestation that plagues this building. As mention above, the window and bathroom are the original installments, and due to poor maintenance the moisture damage has made the wooden window and door frames a wonderful breeding ground for silverfish. They vary in size and a relatively easy to kill but knowing where they live when you're trying to study or shower is unnerving.

2. The windows in a fair number of flats and rooms have been broken before the move in, in that they cannot be closed. This wasn't a major issue at the beginning when temperatures were warm and windows were kept open for ventilation anyways, but after 10 written and verbal complaints to staff throughout the year my flatmates and I have spent 40 weeks (including a sub-zero winter) with windows that do not close. Through winter we slept fully clothed and under a duvet, and the heating is next to useless as it turns off either after 15 minutes or at a certain max temperature, which then require a cool-down period before you can use the heater again. What a joke. Besides the lack of heat retention, the noise is initially unbearable since Julian Markham is on the high street, and combined with the sirens from emergency vehicles, your first month will be sleepless. The closest I personally came to having my window fixed was a guy drilling a nail into my window frame so I wouldn't be able to jump out from the 6th floor given that it gapes open so wide.

3. The is no extractor fan in the kitchen. This is a huge fire hazard and a clear violation of section 1.1a of the residence contract:

("a. maintain the structure of the Residence and keep the Residence and Communal Areas including the lighting, heating and firefighting equipment within them) clean, tidy, in reasonable repair and fit for use by you and other occupiers")

So you might think that staff would have immediately installed one after we told them we were missing one, right? Nope, again it's been 40 weeks and the only thing that has changed is that someone came in and put in a light bulb. This meant someone somewhere knew there was something missing in the kitchen, came up to the flat, and installed a light bulb. The other implication is that, given the innumerable times the kitchen has been engulfed in oven smoke, the smoke alarm must clearly be for show. Nice.

Facilities

As mentioned above, many of the facilities were still under construction when we moved in and for the first month of living. When they were completed, the best word to describe them would be "underwhelming". To access these facilities you need a card key, so they are fairly secure.

The laundry room has 4 washers and 6 dryers (genius), all of which are operated using the Circuit Laundry system via an app for your phone. This system is a devil spawn in and of itself, which you can read more about here. Pricing aside, the main issue is that it seems to be a lottery system of whether or not your clothes will be stained with mysterious dark patches or not. The first time this happened I vowed to hand-wash more expensive items in the sink.

The addition of a study room is in theory a good one since New Hunt's Library in Guy's campus is notoriously packed, yet somehow they managed to mess this one up too. As mentioned in the introduction, the accommodation is above a local Chinese restaurant, with the communal spaces of the building being adjacent to this establishment. Unfortunately, the study room seems to be located either next to the plumbing systems or the kitchen, with loud bangs and noisy gushes of water making the entire existence of the room pointless. Furthermore, the furnishing suffers from the same issues as the desks in the rooms, in that they are far too short and far too wide for any meaningful spread of laptop, books and notepads. The arrangement of seating also implies an optimistic interior designer, where each desk has two rows of seats for two sets of people on either side of the desk, on a desk which already struggles to accommodate one. Bonkers. Lastly, the only way to access the bins for garbage disposal is via the study room, which is also permanently set to a blistering temperature conducive to either dehydrating you whilst studying, or accentuating the sour aromas of cheap student meals.

Compared to last year, the common room and outdoor garden have seen the biggest improvements. The only social space previous were two chairs in the lobby, but now there's a fully furnished space with sofas, bean bags and a TV, as well as your pigeon hole for letter mail. It's a shame that the sofas are deceptively hard, but there's really not much to complain about. The expansion of a garden social area is also great, with lounge chairs, space heaters and pool and table tennis tables. Again, not much to complain about here, because it really is a fantastic area. It's a real shame these areas aren't utilised more, because there's a curfew on when the garden can be used (i.e. you can't use it at night so what's the point of a social area?) and the common room seems to be used exclusively by staff or student waiting in hopes of finding staff (more on this later).

Staff and Services

The staff and support, or lack thereof, is the single most infuriating thing about living in Julian Markham House. I can deal with having to live with a broken window for a week, heck even with the silverfish, as long as I knew it was going to be fixed. The staff here Julian Markham have work ethics lower than a wine cellar dwelling student, and the best universal example is the empty seat at reception.

"Welcome Home" says a big yellow sign, yet no one is ever present to greet you. Staff frequently hide in their break room, behind a code-locked, frosted glass windowed door so you can't even see if they're in there. Pray that you get a decent staff member on duty and you might actually find them in the break room with the door open, or in the common room watching TV. If you're unlucky you'll get one that'll decide to pop out to the empty garden, whilst shamelessly propping up a "Sorry! I'm away on a Customer Service Visit" sign at reception. There was even one incident where one member of staff screamed at my flat mate over a bin bag. Yikes. More seriously, tough luck if you ever need them for an emergency or are locked out, since the break room is next to the common room and requires a card key.

But again, I could live with staff hiding in their break room, if it meant that things actually got fixed. Again, it's unbelievable the amount of times I've had to write and vocalise complaints, only for nothing to happen. The only time something was fixed on a relatively (for this team of staff) quick timescale of 2 weeks was when the lift broke, and even then I suppose it was because it directly inconvenienced them.

Another aspect of Halls is the social aspect, which are Julian Markham are, in the kindest way possible, mis-timed. A welcome moving in party in December, 3 months after we've moved in? Fantastic. Aside from a few group painting sessions and a tour around a museum there really haven't been many community building activities, which shows since most people don't even know the people in neighbouring flats, let alone the rest of their floor or building.

Conclusion

Looking back at this year in Julian Markham, the only real standout point was the location, but even then it's on a high street with a plethora of competitive student accommodation options, the most comparable being Highline for University for the Arts London students, which is literally the other half of the building Julian Markham occupies and has an equally comparable renovated interior (if not better) for £50 cheaper per week. Also, next door are the Dashwood studios at £289.00 pw (whose facilities and recreational spaces seem vastly superior) or a studio at Portchester house at £272 pw. Note how all of these alternatives are studios and hence private (1 person), and not shared between 6 other people like in Julian Markham.

Seeing as the rent for Julian Markham in 2019/20 is confirmed to rise to close to £300, I would highly recommend looking at the aforementioned alternatives, or if money is the limiting factor and you only require basic facilities, KCL Wolfson House is situated right on Guy's Campus and is much cheaper £155 pw.

All in all, Julian Markham has a fair few shortcomings, all of which are compounded by staff who seem to not give a shit, and hence nothing is changed or fixed. Even if you get lucky with the lottery and get a room without a broken window or Silverfish, there much better options out there and the KCL endorsement means little in terms of the Halls experience.

This review was written in 2018/9, where the prices per week were £259.

Thank you for reading.