NAPOLEON was perceptive when he described England as a nation of shopkeepers. There's a strong mercantile streak in the British character, and many of us can think of nothing nicer than starting up a little shop and working for ourselves. Right now this dream seems to be particularly prevalent among credit-crunch-stricken City bankers who may be in need of another job come the new year. There's nothing like impending unemployment to make one reconsider one's life goals.

Some of these anxious bankers have been perusing two Grade II listed Georgian houses complete with shops on Amwell Street on the Clerkenwell/Islington border. The houses, each for sale for £1.3 million freehold, would today be called “live/work units”, but the work part is optional - a buyer prepared to act as a landlord could let the downstairs shop for £20,000- £25,000 a year. “People who work in the City have been interested,” says Lisa Mason, of the estate agent Hurford Salvi Carr. “These houses would allow you to make a tidy sum on the lease of the shop, or pack in the City lifestyle and start up a gallery or a community shop.”

Amwell Street was built in 1830 by the Rev William Lloyd Baker, a Gloucestershire clergyman. Today, it's an up-and-coming area of photographic studios, low-rise council housing, classic Georgian terraced houses with Quality Street-style shop fronts (“Lloyd & Son, High Class Dairy Produce” is at no 42), and chic boutiques (Emma Hope, Timorous Beasties). Not all locals are happy about the street's gentrification. “I've been here 29 years and the area has changed completely. Now it's full of rich people - not my sort at all,” says one newsagent.

If you're prepared to meet with disdain as you buy your copy of The Times, the Amwell Street houses are very desirable. The first has two bedrooms, a reception room and kitchen, over four floors (2,155 sq ft), plus a double garage that could be turned into a workshop. The shop is currently let to a dry-cleaning firm. The second, larger at 2,308 sq ft, has four bedrooms, reception room and kitchen over five floors. The current owner's mother established the shop, Barbara's Florist, in 1953. He is now retiring, having bought the freehold of the shop from Islington council in September.

Potential buyers on Amwell Street don't have to be contemplating a life change. One City viewer, says Mason, “thought a shop would make a nice hobby for his wife.”

Hurford Salvi Carr: 020-7250 1012

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