Sundial Court

Sundial Court is worth considering for the people and the location, even though the accommodation itself is in rough shape. As a new GSMD student, it can be a great place to meet people in your year quickly. You're living alongside 170+ people, and the community is probably the main reason I'd still recommend it. The Guildhall's main buildings are a 2 minute walk away, and Waitrose, Tesco and quite a few Prets are around the corner. Moorgate and Barbican tube stations make it easy to get around, and Liverpool Street, Shoreditch, Old Street, St. Paul's and even the Southbank are walkable. The school is close and much of Central London is convenient from here. The price was £210/week when I wrote this, going up to £224/week later in the year. Still, for that money, the flats aren't worth it on their own. The building was renovated in 1995 and plenty of it seems untouched since. Many bedrooms are dark and dinghy, with flaking paint, and the beds and mattresses are filthy and uncomfortable. Depending on the flat, up to four people share a toilet and shower, though the rooms are larger than in some ensuite halls. Music students get bigger rooms for their instruments, while drama and production arts students often get much smaller ones. The kitchens and shower rooms also look stuck in 1995. Central heating is unreliable, hot water is poor, and despite recently upgraded pumps, water pressure is terrible, especially on the top floor. Old induction hobs and ovens can take up to 20 minutes to heat properly. Damp and mold can grow on kitchen and shower room walls and ceilings. The condition has even caused safety problems: a student's bedroom ceiling collapsed last September, and a couple of months later another flat's shower room ceiling came down. Staff experiences vary. Tom Alcott, the Accommodation Coordinator, is lovely, approachable and responsive to questions and complaints, and seems to care about residents. Some security guards are friendly, but others are rude, uninterested and unhelpful. Earlier this year one locked an ambulance in the courtyard, so paramedics had to wait for him to return before taking the patient to hospital. Contract staff can be poor too, with building and engineering jobs delayed for days or weeks. Contractors upgrading lights at the end of last year left holes in walls, exposed wiring under the new shaving lights, and rooms covered in plaster dust, screws and bits of metal. So yes, you can find a better room for the same money or less, but the convenience and community are hard to beat. The flats suck, but that's never really been Sundial Court's selling point.