British Properties, West Vancouver: Homes for Sale, Prices, Schools and Daily Life

The British Properties covers the slope above the Upper Levels Highway (Highway 1) on the east side of West Vancouver. Taylor Way climbs to it from Marine Drive and Park Royal and crosses over the highway. Southborough Drive, Eyremount Drive, King Georges Way, St. Andrews Road, Crestline Road and Millstream Road are among its streets. The roads bend with the hill: TransLink's stop list has the 254 bus heading north, west, east and south at different stops on Eyremount Drive alone.

The lots are large and the houses stand apart from each other. On October 9, 2026, the middle lot among the houses listed here measured 19,166 square feet, which is 0.44 of an acre. Seven in ten listing descriptions on that date mentioned a view. In our experience, the view from the upper streets includes Burrard Inlet, Stanley Park and downtown Vancouver, and it is the first thing most buyers ask about.

British Properties has been an official place name since 1979, when the province adopted it on the District's recommendation. MLS® listings give the name to the streets described here. Chartwell, to the west, and Glenmore, to the north-east, are listed under their own area names.

In our view, the British Properties suits a buyer who wants land, a large house and distance from neighbours, and who accepts a drive for groceries, school and work. A buyer who wants to walk to shops and catch a frequent bus will find Ambleside, at the bottom of the hill, a closer match.

The District of West Vancouver states that it is on the traditional and unceded territories of the Squamish, Tsleil-Waututh and Musqueam Nations. Before any houses stood here, the slope was logged. A street plan kept by the West Vancouver Archives marks Brothers Creek, a logging railway and logging roads dated 1870 to 1890. The District says the stumps along its Forestry Heritage Walk, which starts beside 1121 Millstream Road, still show burn marks from forest fires in 1916 and 1920.

The neighbourhood began with a company. The West Vancouver Archives records that the Guinness brewing family created British Pacific Properties Limited in 1931 to buy 4,700 acres (1,902 hectares) on Hollyburn Ridge and to receive the right to develop them. In return the company agreed to build a crossing from Vancouver. The District's history page says the family began the British Properties in 1932. The province's place name office dates the name to the early 1930s, when the Guinness family bought the land. A sales brochure in the Archives labels its lot map Capilano Estates. The street plan in the Archives was drawn in April 1932 and revised in January 1933. It names G.S. Conway, a registered engineer, and lists Olmsted Brothers, a firm of landscape architects in Brookline, Massachusetts, as associate consultants. The plan shows the height of the land and the proposed streets together.

The crossing became the Lions Gate Bridge. The Canadian Encyclopedia records that the City of Vancouver long resisted a bridge at the First Narrows because of its effect on Stanley Park, and that voters rejected the idea in 1927. The engineer Alfred J.T. Taylor then persuaded the Guinness family to finance housing in West Vancouver, and the family offered to pay for the bridge. The District's timeline gives the dates: work began on March 31, 1937, and the bridge opened to cars on November 14, 1938. A third lane was added in 1952, the province bought the bridge in 1955, and the tolls ended on April 1, 1963. Canada's register of historic places says the bridge was built to open the suburbs of West Vancouver to development. The Archives credits the company with two more projects. The Capilano Golf and Country Club was laid out on 165 acres and opened for play in the summer of 1937. Park Royal shopping centre, at Taylor Way and Marine Drive, opened in September 1950. The Canadian Encyclopedia says West Vancouver grew slowly until the company's investments started a period of fast growth in housing after the Second World War.

One part of this history is racist, and a buyer may still see it in the ownership papers for a lot. In January 2020, CBC News reported that several homes in the British Properties carried historic covenants saying that people of colour could not live there. A covenant is a written restriction attached to the ownership record of a lot. The example the mayor read aloud barred anyone of African or Asian descent from living on a property unless the person was a servant. Section 222 of BC's Land Title Act makes every restriction of this kind void, whenever it was written. West Vancouver council voted unanimously that month to work with the province on removing the words from land titles. CBC reported that British Pacific Properties said it supported the motion.

Daily life here depends on a car. The map data on this page shows no grocery store, pharmacy or clinic inside the area. In our experience, most residents do the weekly shopping at Park Royal, the shopping centre at the foot of Taylor Way. The distance table gives the straight line distance to Park Royal, downtown Vancouver, Lonsdale Quay and Lions Gate Hospital.

The table measures in a straight line, so it names a North Vancouver District library branch as the nearest one. Check the drive before you rely on that distance. West Vancouver's own library, the West Vancouver Memorial Library, is at 1950 Marine Drive.

Nearby, Capilano View Cemetery at 1490 3rd Street is older than the British Properties. The District says it has served West Vancouver residents since 1926, and it is open every day from dawn to dusk.

In our experience, families here plan the week around driving: the drive to school, the shopping trip to Park Royal and the commute over the Lions Gate Bridge or along the highway. In our experience, too, the streets are quiet and many houses sit behind hedges or gates. Visit on a weekday morning and again on a wet evening before you decide, because the same drive feels different in each.

The forest starts where the top streets end. The District places the Brothers Creek Trail at the top of the British Properties, in the 1100 block of Millstream Road, and gives its length as 5 km for the round trip. Dogs that behave well are allowed. The copy of the District's page saved on May 1, 2026 warns of two missing bridges. The wooden bridge where the Crossover Trail meets the Brothers Creek Trail was damaged in a storm on October 19 and 20, 2024, and the District planned to replace it in 2026. A second bridge, where the trail meets the Baden-Powell Trail, was removed in the fall of 2023, and the District will not replace it. Follow the signed detours.

The Millstream Trail starts where Eyremount Drive meets Chartwell Drive and leads to the Brothers Creek Trail, the Old Brewis Trail and the Lawson Creek Forestry Heritage Walk. Higher up, the Baden-Powell Trail crosses the whole North Shore. The District describes its West Vancouver part as starting at the Cleveland Dam, climbing Hollyburn Ridge, passing through Cypress Provincial Park and ending at Horseshoe Bay. Inside the neighbourhood, the map on this page marks small parks such as Andover Park, Hadden Park, Cross Creek Park and Ballantree Park. In our experience, these are places for a short walk with a dog, and families drive to Ambleside for a beach or a large playground.

The Capilano River runs along the east side. Metro Vancouver's Capilano River Regional Park follows its canyon, with forest trails, salmon in the river and views of Capilano Lake, the lake behind the Cleveland Dam. The park's Coho Loop Trail is 1 km long and crosses two bridges. Its fish hatchery, which Fisheries and Oceans Canada runs, closed to visitors on October 1, 2026 for building work.

The riverside path from West Vancouver to the park is closed part of the way. The Capilano Pacific Trail starts at Ambleside Park and used to continue through the regional park to the dam. A landslide on January 6, 2021, near Moyne Drive, removed a section of the trail and the sewer pipe under it. The District's page, as saved in August 2025, says signs now send walkers up to Keith Road. On October 10, 2026, Metro Vancouver's park page said bridge work was under way on the Capilano Pacific Trail, that the work also affected access from Rabbit Lane, and that walkers could not pass through the work zone.