I Went on a Quest to Find London’s Least Gentrifiable Area

Gentrification is an ever-present threat. One minute you're going for a quiet drink at your local; the next, a man named Orlando is wrenching the Guinness from your hand and trying to put an espresso martini in front of you. "They look kind of the same!" he's going, "only this one's three times the price and if you have a couple of them in a row you'll get really, really bad anxiety!"

Before long a cup of coffee costs an hour's wages; Foxtons starts describing the area as "vibrant"; long-time renters are priced out; and developers move in and demolish social housing to make way for luxury flats which are eventually sold off entirely to overseas investors

I hear you asking: Nick, is anywhere in London safe? Well, it's a good thing you asked, because recently I set out to find a gentrification-safe spot – somewhere that's never going to be the next Shoreditch or Peckham or Walthamstow, no matter what happens.

Property expert Henry Pryor provided me with a list of criteria that make an area prime for gentrification – qualities like: a visible police presence and black cabs being reluctant to take residents there after midnight; "pavements that aren't smooth enough to skateboard on"; and areas with large ethnic minority populations, as homes here were cheap and attractive to immigrants in the 1950s and 1960s, and that generation's kids and grandkids are now selling off those properties. Pryor also said that Foxtons usually establish themselves in areas before they've been fully gentrified, ready for the ensuing wave of renters and buyers.

Armed with this information I set off to find the least gentrifiable area in London. Here are the places that made the shortlist.

Not to be confused with the capital of Jersey, St Helier is a large housing estate between Carshalton and Morden, at the southern edge of London. Morden was recently featured in our "What Life Looks Like at the End of the Line" series, and St Helier is ten minutes past it on the bus, so it's literally beyond the end of the line. It is, however, still technically London, and boasts a leisure centre, a primary school, a hospital and nice leafy streets – perfect if you're unhealthy, a child or gravely ill.

The big reason it's unlikely to be gentrified any time soon is the fact it's fucking miles away from anything fun, meaning the normal buzzwords used to entice investors – "edgy", "lively", "not an actual bus journey from the nearest tube stop" – are redundant here. There's also no Foxtons, which has to be a good sign. A two-bed house in the area will cost you anything from £280,000 to around £450,000, which is on the cheaper end of the scale for London, but obviously still a huge amount of money to live somewhere with the same vibe as an East Anglia commuter town.

Although Romford technically is in the capital, it doesn't feel like London; if it wasn't for the fact that every voice you hear sounds like Bob Hoskins' it could easily pass for Warrington or Widnes. There's also not much diversity – in 2011 the population was 82 percent white British, and not much seems to have changed. Neither of those points bode particularly well for those who want to see Romford High Street's Market Cafe turned into a Franco Manca.

House prices here are similar to those in St Helier – £240,000 to £450,000 to buy a two-bedder, or between £1,100 to £1,500 a month to rent – so not exactly cheap enough to entice a generation of creatives, who'd make the area "cool" with their "art" and their "nightlife" and their "small plate restaurants", which would in turn attract developers and chains hoping to capitalise on the oncoming influx of cash. There's also no Foxtons there yet, implying the estate agents don't see much opportunity in the area.

Mind you, it is a 17-minute direct train journey to Shoreditch, and there are a lot of guys around with bulldog neck tattoos, which might appeal to that strange breed of young creative that only drinks in shit pubs because "they're authentic".

Despite having a population of 41,000, Welling has the ambience of a small village and residents with an average age of about 90. It seems relatively well kept, in a sort of get-off-my-lawn, Neighbourhood Watch kind of way, and for the same reason also fairly dull. Mind you, everyone thought Peckham was boring ten years ago, and then it got a decent Italian restaurant and a cocktail bar on top of a car park and everyone lost their minds.

Still, there's really not much to tempt gentrifiers here; it takes ages to get into town, there aren't any old warehouses to convert and it strikes me very much as the sort of place where residents would back a campaign to halt the building of anywhere that employs a "mixologist". Maybe I'm wrong, but also I'm pretty sure I'm right.

Eltham's similar to Welling in that it seems to have a population consisting predominantly of elderly white people, i.e. the kind of people with a direct line to their local councillor and every intention of calling in a favour when that new bar-cum-gig-space applies for its alcohol license.

Mind you, it's not far from Deptford, New Cross and Peckham, and all the artists and budding restauranteurs Goldsmiths, LCC and Camberwell spit out every year, and with two-bed places being rented out at £1,000 a month (a mere £250 each if you split between two couples), it lies precariously close to the danger zone.

Judging both on Pryor's criteria and my intuition after visiting each of these places, it's a straight tie between Welling and Romford.

If you live in either of those places already, well done! If you're reading this and you're young and you're looking for somewhere to move where you're never going to have to deal with a sudden proliferation of organic laundrettes, move to one of these places, then watch as more young people follow you, and then as the developers follow them. And then look on at the sudden proliferation of organic laundrettes. Because this is London, and nowhere's safe forever.

@nickchesterv / @SamTahmassebi