MODERNISM IN METRO-LAND

Anatomy of a House No.26: New Ways, Northampton

8/4/2026

Anatomy of a House No.26

New Ways, Northampton
1926
Peter Behrens

The garden facade of New Ways, Northampton. Image from Architects Journal.

Over the course of our previous twenty five editions of Anatomy of a House, we have explored a range of modernist homes. We began with the splendid International Style villa High and Over by Amyas Connell, and have moved onto art deco outfits of Tudor palaces, brutalist temples in Hampstead, High Tech dwellings in Camden and much more besides. But all those had to start somewhere, and that place is generally acknowledged to have been a modest house on a suburban road in Northampton. The house is known as New Ways, and it is widely considered to be the first modernist house in the country. It was designed by the German architect Peter Behrens for businessman Wenman Joseph Bassett-Lowke.

Bassett-Lowke founded the eponymous company in 1898, specialising in manufacturing model kits of railways, boats, ships and construction sets. He was born in Northampton in 1877, and in 1916 bought a house at 78 Derngate, in the centre of the town, a Georgian-era townhouse. He then commissioned Scottish architect Charles Rennie Mackintosh to remodel it. Mackintosh had come to fame with his designs in Scotland, including offices for newspapers The Daily Record and The Glasgow Herald and Hill House in Helensburgh. At Derngate, Mackintosh added a rear extension and completely remodeled the interior. Ten years after this was completed Bassett-Lowke and his wife Florence had a new house built further out from the town centre.

The front of New Ways. Image from Conway.

The architect he chose to design his new house was Peter Behrens, who was known at the time for his industrial designs, such as the AEG Turbine Hall in Berlin from 1909, and for a range of products made by the company ranging from clocks to lights to kettles. Behrens was born in Hamburg in 1868, and became a founder member of the German Werkbund in 1907, an organization that sought to bring high standards of design to mass produced goods. By the time he was commissioned by Bassett-Lowke he had designed a number of houses, all in Germany, but none in the pared down manner he would bring to Northampton. After his only building in Britain, he would go on to design more right angled modernist domestic buildings, like his apartments on the Wesseinhof estate in Stuttgart (1925-27) and houses in Berlin and Kromberg im Taus.

Peter Behrens' sketch for the front door of New Ways. Image from RIBApix.

Peter Behrens' sketch for the living room of New Ways. Image from RIBApix.

Behrens design for New Ways is fairly straightforward, with an almost square plan for the two storey house. It sits at the front of the typical long, thin suburban plot, close to Wellingborough Road. It was built in brick and finished in a white washed cement render, with concrete construction being rarely used for domestic buildings at this point. The front is enlivened by a pointed window bay that rises vertically above the entrance, with a date sign on top reading 1926. Below the window, and above the centrally-placed art deco double entrance door is a canopy with small pylons. The pylons placed above the date sign originally lit up at night. The ground floor has two windows either side of the door, but there are none on the first floor, a rare sight on an English house. Around the roofline is a crested parapet, with two square chimneys set back to the rear.

Some of the fittings designed by C.R. Mackintosh for 78 Derngate and moved to New Ways. Image from 78 Derngate.

The garden front is more expressive than the street side, with rectangular windows for both ground and first floors, a recessed balcony area on the first floor and a staircase down to the garden from the ground floor. Inside the expressionist style, only hinted at outside, is given fuller reign. The entrance hallway floor has an irregular geometric pattern in tile, and elsewhere there are triangular light shades, cubist mosaic windows and Bauhaus-influenced rugs. There are also some pieces designed by Mackintosh for 78 Derngate that were transferred over by Bassett-Lowke when New Ways was completed in June 1926. These include a hanging light fixture, a radiator cover in lead and glass, a cabinet with an inbuilt clock and walls stencils, all placed in the study of the new house.

New Ways featured on the front cover of Ideal House in 1927. Image from 78 Derngate.

Although there was not an explosion of new modernist houses built in the wake of New Ways, it did prove to be influential for those that did dare bring the contemporary to their designs. Scottish architect Thomas S. Tait used a similar design for one of his houses at Silver End, Essex in 1927, using a very similar front facade complete with a triangular window topped with small pylons and a windowless first floor. The rear face of New Ways also influenced the design of Starlock in Rye, East Sussex, designed in 1930 by Frank Scarlett, who used it for the front of this house. Due to its importance in the history of modern architecture in Britain, New Ways was listed in 1952. Unlike many modernist architects in Germany in the 1930s, Behrens remained in the country after the Nazis took power in 1933. In fact in 1936 he moved from Vienna to Berlin to teach at the state arts academy, the Prussian Academy of Arts, and was chosen by Albert Speer to plan the rebuilding of Berlin. However, he did not live to carry this out and died on 27th February 1940. Bassett-Lowke continued to live at New Ways until his own death on 21st October 1953.

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The Village of Tomorrow

24/3/2026

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An illustration of the Kemp and Tasker Olympia House. Image from C20 society.

The Ideal Home Exhibition, held at the Olympia Exhibition Centre in Kensington, began in 1908 and continues to this day, now known as the Ideal Home Show. The exhibition was devised by Wareham Smith, advertising manager of the Daily Mail newspaper, to promote the paper, then only in its 12th year of existence. The set up of the exhibition then, largely as now, was divided into different sections, with areas focusing on house styles, construction, interior decoration, furniture and food preparation. A newsworthy part of the exhibition was the Ideal House Competition, where house builders would showcase their latest designs, which they hoped would catch the visitors eye, and lead to more house sales. Most of the house designs were along the lines of what the newspaper explained to readers would be on show “red roofed cottages, brown bungalows, and gaily coloured pavilions”. The modern designs that were being built in Europe in the early years of the 20th century, influenced by Le Corbusier, Mies Van de Rohe and Bruno Taut and showcased at the 1927 Weissenhof Estate in Stuttgart, were largely ignored inside the sheltered avenues of Olympia.

The House That Jack Built (1931) by T. Dalgleish Maclean and D. G. Towner

A few modernist designs managed to sneak into the exhibition such as the two Concrete Houses of 1928 by the Portland Cement Company, the 1931 Hush-Hush house designed by A. Trystan Edwards for W.T. Lamb & Sons or The House That Jack Built from the same year by T. Dalgleish Maclean and D. G. Towner, a design for a house for a married couple to live in without staff. However the influence of modernism could not be resisted forever, and in 1934 the wholly modern Village of Tomorrow was exhibited, in the hope that white walls and flat roofs would prove a popular new look for house buyers. It is not too much of a spoiler to tell you that this did not occur. Home buyers' reluctance to embrace modernist living meant that estates of flat roofed houses did not bloom around the suburbs in the interwar years, although a few attempts were made. Of the nine modern house types exhibited in the Village of Tomorrow, a small number were built of each type and can still be found around London’s sprawl today. Here we will go through the house types and where they were eventually built.

The Wates house, as built in New Malden

The building company Wates, founded in 1887 by Streatham builder Edward Wates and now a large construction firm, employed architect Ronald Aver Duncan to design their entry. Duncan had designed a “House of the Future” for the exhibition of 1928, alongside S. Rowland Pierce, which was packed with labour saving appliances and electrical devices. The house he designed for Wates was less futuristic but moderne in appearance, with a sun deck roof, square staircase tower and horizontal stripes. A group of these houses were built in a slightly modified, semi detached form four years later at New Malden in Kingston upon Thames, and others can be found in Theydon Bois and Fulwell.

The Sunspan house, as built in Welwyn. Image from Conway.

Probably the most recognisable house that came out of the Village of Tomorrow was the Sunspan. Designed by Wells Coates and David Pleydell-Bouveire for the developers E.L. Berg and Co, the Sunspan was the most revolutionary of the 1934 house types, built with prefabricated parts and planned with a curved shape to allow maximum sunlight throughout the day. Coates had previously developed his “Isotype” housing idea in 1927, which had some features that would show up on the Sunspan house, such as the curved glass section. His Isokon building in Belsize Park was officially opened three months after the 1934 exhibition.

The Sunspan house on show at the exhibition was a two storey home with a curved facade on one side. This could be oriented to the best angle on the plot it was built on, preferably in a north-south axis, The Olympia house was fitted out with furniture and devices designed by Coates, such as the circular Bakelite Ecko radio. The building company evidently didn't think Coates and Pleydell-Bouverie’s design was the finished article, and they proceeded to build altered versions of it, with extra storeys and other changes. These can be found again in New Malden, as well as Long Ditton, Hinchley Wood and various other spots in the South of England.

The Davis Estates house, as built in Southgate.

By volume built,the most successful house from the exhibition was probably the one for Davis Estates, which can be found all around the suburbs of London, particularly in Petts Wood in Bromley and in Harrow. As was (and indeed still is) the case with high volume house builders, no architect was recognised as the designer of this house. But whoever did design it, produced a distinctive design with curved metal windows on both floors, a small front balcony and the obligatory sun roof. Like the Wates houses, this model was adapted for semi detached building, although some detached types were built in Belmont, Harrow. Emigre architect Peter Caspari was employed as an architect for the company, and though he did design apartment blocks for them,such as Kingsley Court in Willesden, it is not known if he contributed to this house design.

The G.T. Crouch house, as built in Hendon.

At the more prestigious end of the scale is the house built for the builders G.T. Crouch Ltd, the Sunway, produced by architects C.E. Simmons and Cecil Grellier. The elements of this design were somewhat similar to some of the other show houses; white rendered walls, a flat roof with a sundeck and a staircase tower. Buyers obviously did not think this combination was for them with only two built; one in Hendon and the other in Luton. Like most of the architects who designed the houses at the exhibition (with the exception of Coates and Pleydell-Bouverie), Simmons was not a modernist ideologue, and designed other houses in a variety of styles.

The Morrell Brothers house, as built at Herne Hill.

Also at the grander end of the scale was the house designed by Leslie Kemp and Frederick Tasker for Morrell Brothers builders of Bromley. They produced a two storey, flat roofed design with a curved ground floor window, that they boasted could be built in any site. In the end, it was only built on two, with one in Herne Hill, on a street of houses built by Morrell’s (including their own home), and one in West Wickham. A third was built in Dublin in 1936, but this seems to have been a copy rather than an official design, an occurrence that happened frequently with the house designs paraded in the press. Morrells were better known for their semi detached houses, built on speculative estates such as the Coney Hall estate in West Wickham, which was the site of a rent strike that ultimately sent them into bankruptcy.

Other companies to show their house designs in the Village of Tomorrow included John Laing, J.J Hodgson, Coalelectric Estate Development and the Universal Housing Company. The last of these probably had the most interesting design of the others, with a boxy design featuring a colonnade looking onto the garden, although when a couple of copies were built, a central staircase tower was included. All this fairly serious modernism was somewhat upstaged by another house on show at the exhibition, The Gadgets model house, as designed by illustrator W. Heath Robinson. The house sent up the era's craze for the labour saving appliances, as also showcased at the exhibition in Staybrite Street, with a variety of odd looking gadgets inside the 20ft tall house.

The John Laing 1935 house, exhibited at Kings Cross. Image from RIBApix.

As well as the exhibition at Olympia, the building companies also showcased their houses at various locations around London. John Laing installed a copy of their three bedroom model outside Kings Cross railway station, with visitors admitted from 10am to 10pm daily. Davis Estates had model houses at both Vauxhall Bridge Road and next to Charing Cross station, whilst both E.L. Berg and G. T. Crouch had show homes in situ at Clapham Junction. However all this effort was in vain, as homebuyers did not take to the modern style and at the 1935 Ideal Home Exhibition, the “Jubilee Village” featured just one design with any modernist influence, the Davis Estates submission, with its curved Suntrap windows and corner entrance. The Village of Tomorrow had quickly become the village of yesterday.

Many of the houses mentioned here feature in our Speculative Suburban Houses 1933-39 Mini Guide, available HERE

References
The Ideal Home Through the 20th Century- Deborah S. Ryan
Semi Detached London Alan- A. Jackson
Wells Coates: A monograph- Sherban Cantacuzino
Modernist Semis and Terraces in England- Finn Jensen

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The Inbetweeners: Ealing Common and Hounslow West

25/2/2026

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Ealing Common Underground Station. Image from Bright Underground Spaces.

Charles Holden’s first set of stations for London Transport, the Northern Line extension to Morden in 1926, introduced a fresh new look for the underground, based on a three part screen facade. This design could be adapted for a variety of sites, easily fitting into an existing shopping parade or onto a street corner in the already built-up sprawl of London. The 1930s saw the tube rapidly expanding, stretching beyond the inner suburbs into Middlesex and Essex. This meant station buildings could sit in larger plots, not having to fit in with the existing suburban scene, and so could be more expansive in form. This led to some of Holden’s and the underground’s most celebrated stations; Sudbury Town, Arnos Grove, Southgate and a number of others. But in between the first Northern Line stations and the “brick boxes with concrete lids” as Holden called them, were a couple of stations that bridged the gap from one design to the other; Ealing Common and Hounslow West.

Ealing Common station under construction. Image from London Transport Museum.

The stations opened in 1931 as part of the Piccadilly Line extension westwards from Acton Town towards Hounslow and South Harrow, both replacing earlier station buildings. Ealing Common was opened on March 1st, with Hounslow West following on July 5th. Holden adapted the flexible screen facade from the Morden extension,into a fully fledged station building, using a seven-sided double-height ticket hall as the main structure. Around the seven sides of the upper portion of the ticket hall are rectangular windows with an underground roundel on six of them. The station also had a blue enamel name sign which went around the edge of the roofline (now removed at Ealing Common), and the first use of an illuminated name sign at the front of the station, an integral feature of later stations. Like the Northern Line stations, Ealing Common and Hounslow West were built in Portland stone, with concrete roof slabs. At these new stations Holden added a granite finish at ground level, intended to prevent wear and tear from passenger flow.

The ticket hall ceiling of Hounslow West station. Image from London Transport Museum.

At street level were shop units, and Hounslow West also had a drop off and pick up area for cars, a useful feature in the suburbs where the car was gaining ascendancy. The interiors of the stations used the seven sided structure to create a heptagonal shape in the ceiling. At Hounslow West this was adorned in the centre by a hanging light fixture designed by Basil Ionides. This shape was echoed in the ticket hall floor with the use of polished cement St James's tiles. Ionides also decorated both ticket halls with a dado rail in tile and terrace and a wall frieze in geometric tiled patterns, pink and yellow at Hounslow and green and grey for Ealing.

Ealing Common ticket hall interior. Image from London Transport Museum.

The platforms featured the curved concrete canopies developed by London Underground chief architect Stanley Heaps, and later used at other Piccadilly Line stations. Hounslow West had its platform area redeveloped in 1975 for the extension to Hatton Cross and beyond to Heathrow. As Ealing Common and Hounslow West opened, Holden had already moved on to ‘purer’ geometric forms, using the rectangle, square and the circle at stations like Sudbury Town (which also opened in 1931) and Arnos Grove (which followed in 1932). Both Ealing Common and Hounslow West were listed in May 1994, with the listing notes for the latter commenting on its “richness and completeness…as well as its unusual form”, and both still serve the Piccadilly Line 90 years after opening.

Ealing Common and Hounslow West are featured in our London Tube Stations 1924-61 book, available HERE

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Anatomy of a House No.25: Sewell's Orchard, Tewin

12/2/2026

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Anatomy of a House No.25

Sewell's Orchard, Tewin, Hertfordshire
1936
Mary Crowley

The Garden front of the center house of the three at Tewin.

The work of female architects was few and far between in interwar Britain. We have covered the house designed by artist Dora Gordine in Kingston on a previous Anatomy of a House blog, and there were others such as Justin Blanco White, Norah Aiton and Betty Scott. One female architect who would prove to be the most influential of those who practiced in the 1920s and 30s was Mary Crowley. Her work designing schools in the post war years, alongside husband David Medd, first for Hertfordshire County Council and then for the Ministry of Education, would help transform schools from the regimented Victorian-era layout to a more flexible, child-centred approach. But it is her house design we are interested here, and we will explore the group of three houses she designed at Sewell’s Orchard in the village of Tewin, Hertfordshire

Crowley was born in Bradford on 4th August 1907. Her father, Ralph, was the Chief Medical Officer for the Ministry of Education and was a Quaker, two strong influences on Mary’s future career. Mary attended the progressive Bedales school in Hampshire, a coeducational secular establishment where Mary would become Head Girl. She later attended the Architectural Association, where she met other young women studying architecture such as Judith Ledeboer, Jessica Albery and Justin Blanco White. After passing her qualifications, Crowley worked in the office of Louis De Soisson in Welwyn Garden City, where her family had moved in 1921. It was nearby that Crowley would design and build a terrace of three houses on a plot of land bought by her parents. Mary’s mother thought the plot of land was the right one for them, especially as Sewell had been a name in their family.

The three houses seen in their landscape.

The three houses that Mary designed were to house her parents, her sister Elfrida and her husband Cecil Kemp and the Miall family, all Quakers. Kemp was the head architect for the Miners Welfare Commission and the National Coal Board, designing modernist-influenced pithead baths at sites such as Snowdon Colliery in Kent. Kemp, and Mary’s friend from the AA, John Brandon Jones, assisted Crowley with the drawings and details of the house, but they were all her own design. Mary had taken a trip to Scandinavia in July 1930 as part of her architectural studies, and this proved to be influential on the design for Sewell’s Orchard.

A plan of the houses in their grounds

Most modernist houses built in Britain up to that point took their influence from the International Modern style as seen in the work of Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius and other heroic figures from the continent. Crowley's houses however took their cue from a gentler strain of modernism as found in Northern Europe, with less emphasis on white walls and monolithic concrete and more on brick, tile and timber. The three houses are largely separate, with two connected by their garages, with mature trees and a vegetable garden in the shared grounds behind. The houses have sloping, monopitch roofs finished in blue pantiles with the facades on the southerly garden side having overhanging eaves. The windows in the houses were constructed from metal casements with wood frames. The bricks are a mixture of yellow local stock from nearby Hertingfordbury and blue brick used for a plinth. The houses were arranged with open plan ground floors with the dining and living areas flowing into each other.

The living room of the second house. Image from RIBApix.

Crowley worked with Hungarian architect Erno Goldfinger from around 1934, assisting him as he set up his practice in England. She worked on the terrace of houses at Willow Road in Hampstead, which would be completed in 1939 and be home to Goldfinger and his wife Ursula throughout the rest of their lives. That project has some similarities in approach with the Tewin scheme, with both sets of houses showing how modernist design can fit into their environments and use local materials. The pair also produced a design for a prefabricated nursery school in the mid-1930s, something that wasn’t taken up at the time, but would prove influential to both of them.

In 1941 Crowley joined the education department of Hertfordshire County Council under the leadership of Chief Education Officer John Newsom, who wanted to bring the county's educational buildings into the modern world, and became part of the newly formed architects department in 1946. As part of the department, Crowley helped produce innovative designs for new schools, using prefabricated units to build schools quickly, and including commissioned artworks and landscaped grounds in the designs. A good example of Crowley’s work for Herts is Burleigh School in Cheshunt, built from 1946, and designed with David Medd and Bruce Martin using a modular system to enable quick construction.

5 Pennyfeathers Lane, Digswell (1954) David and Mary Medd. Image from RIBApix.

She married Medd in 1949, who she had met whilst working for Goldfinger, and the couple would work for Herts and live in a house they designed together in the village of Digswell in 1953. The house on Pennyfeathers Lane also takes its inspiration from Scandinavian modernism, with its single storey, stock brick structure, formed of two halves connected by a covered walkway. The couple then went to work for the Ministry of Education overseeing the design of the new schools throughout the country, such as Woodside Jr School in Amersham (1957). The houses at Tewin were listed in March 1982, recognized as a pioneering group of houses,with a design “which would not have appeared out of place thirty years earlier”. The Medd's house in Digswell was also listed in April 2007, with the listing noting its unchanged interior and careful integration in the landscape. Mary Medd had passed away in 2005, with her husband David dying in 2009.

Burleigh Primary school, Cheshunt (1948) Herts County Council. Image from RIBApix

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The Archer

4/2/2026

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Eric Aumonier putting the final touches to The Archer statue, 1940. Image from London Transport Museum.

The casual commuter travelling along the High Barnet branch of the Northern Line may notice something a little unusual as they pass through East Finchley station. Come rain or shine, a determined looking figure points his bow and arrow south towards the centre of London and beyond to the line’s terminus at Morden. The Archer sculpture, poised on the eastern wall of the station just above the south bound track, was created by artist Eric Aumonier for the station which had been rebuilt from 1939.

The sculpture and the station rebuild were part of the ill fated Northern Heights programme, a plan to upgrade and extend the northern branches of the Northern Line. The Edgware branch was to be extended into Hertfordshire, and the Barnet branch was to have a series of station upgrades. The rebuilding of East Finchley station was the only part of the programme that came to pass, thanks to budget restraints and the outbreak of war in 1939.

The Archer seen acroos the platforms of East Finchley Station. Image from London Transport Museum.

The new building replaced the 1867 station which was built for the Great Northern Railway, with the rebuilt station primed for the underground which had been slowly making its way northwards. The initial plan by Leonard Bucknell and Ruth Ellis was revised by Charles Holden, who had been busy with his University of London scheme, another project which was curtailed, leaving us with Senate House.

The new station, completed in 1941, did not have the straightforward clarity of Holden’s earlier work along the Piccadilly Line. Partly this is due to the awkward nature of the site, with the station perched on a railway viaduct. However, at platform level, the streamlined platform shelters and glass bridge over the tracks containing offices, reflects the “Speed, Light and Modernity” that Holden and London Transport supremo Frank Pick brought to the network from the 1920s.

The South Wind releif on 55 Broadway, by Eric Aumonier. Image from London Transport Museum.

The symbol of the station and Holden and Pick’s vision, would be the 10ft statue, installed in 1940. Eric Aumonier was born into the family architectural sculpture business, Aumonier Studios, founded by his grandfather, in 1899. He studied at the Slade School of Art, and became the chief artist for the family firm. He would be commissioned to provide a relief sculpture of the South Wind for Holden’s 55 Broadway headquarters for London Transport in 1929, and a couple of years later would design two statues set into relief panels for the Daily Express building in 1932.

The Speed Underground poster by Alan Rogers, 1930. Image from London Transport Museum.

The Archer was created by using beech timber wood fastened around a steel armature framework, before being covered in reclaimed lead sheets. The bow is made of English ash, and covered in copper and gilt. The symbol of the archer was used to represent the former royal hunting grounds of Enfield that Finchley sits on the edge of, as well as nodding to the concerns of speed and accuracy that Holden and Pick were interested in. Of course the archer motif had also been used by Alan Rogers in his 1930 “Speed Underground” poster for the network. By 1955, the wood used for the original statue had already begun to decay, and it had to be replaced at a cost of £1500, a much steeper price than the £245 paid to Aumonier in 1940.

A sketch of the intended Highgate station with the Dick Whittington statue. Image from Bright Undergound Spaces by David Lawrence.

The Archer was just one artwork planned for the Northern Heights stations. A couple of stops down the line at Highgate, Aumonier was asked to design a statue of Dick Whittington for a new station building, but neither were ever completed. The statue at East Finchley, nicknamed Archie, has become a symbol not just of the station, but also of the surrounding area, with the local newspaper also named The Archer. The station building including the platforms and statue was listed in July 1987.

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Frederick Gibberd and The Modern Flat

4/1/2026

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Pullman Court, Streatham. Image from RIBApix.

Frederick Gibberd was born in Coventry on January 7th 1908. Throughout his career, he and his partnership designed a wide range of buildings, including houses, factories, offices, colleges, libraries, hospitals, power stations, airports and even cathedrals. But the one building type he was most associated with was the flat. After gaining his architectural qualifications at Birmingham School of Art he worked for the firm of E. Berry Webber, best known for their municipal projects in the interwar years, but was laid off as the Great Depression meant construction work dried up. Gibberd then travelled Europe, visiting Prague, Vienna and Budapest, studying the new architecture of the time, before setting his own firm and designing a series of innovative speculative apartment blocks in the 1930s.

Pullman Court as featured in The Modern Flat book in 1937.

As well as his practical work, Gibberd also provided theoretical weight to the idea of the apartment, a relatively new typology to the British urban fabric in the interwar years. Alongside fellow architect F.R.S. Yorke (who was his roommate at Birmingham), Gibberd produced The Modern Flat, a book that provided a survey of modernist apartment blocks from all over the world, including examples from Britain, such as the Isokon flats by Wells Coates and Kensal House by Maxwell Fry and Elizabeth Denby, as well as three examples by Gibberd himself.

Gibberd's birds eye view of the Pullman Court scheme. Image from RIBApix.

The first of those three examples was Pullman Court in Streatham (1935), Gibberd's first major commission, at the age of just 27. The scheme consists of three blocks, two long ones which mirror each other and a taller one at the back of the long, thin plot. The blocks are constructed with reinforced concrete frames infilled with modular panels, the engineering overseen by L.G. Mouchel and Partners. Gibberd arranged the blocks to get maximum light to each apartment, with south-facing balconies and roof gardens on each block as well. The estate also had an open air swimming pool, located at the end of the northern block, now unfortunately filled in. Like many of the new blocks built in the interwar years, it was designed to be occupied by single people or couples, with a range of labour saving devices like refrigerators and fitted kitchens provided.

Two of the Park Court blocks, pictured after completion. Image from RIBApix.

Gibberd also designed Park Court (1937), a speculative estate on the edge of Crystal Palace Park in Sydenham, in a similar fashion. The estate has seven blocks arranged in a semi circle on a triangular piece of land between two roads. The ranges are three storey high and contain 54 four-bedroom flats, built with a reinforced concrete frame and brick infill, painted white to fit the modernist ethos, and steel framed windows. Unfortunately this aesthetic was undermined by the mansard roofs added in the 1980s.

The interior of one of the Ellington Court apartments. Image from RIBApix.

In the north London suburb of Southgate, Gibberd designed Ellington Court for Wells, Wells and Diplock (1937). Unlike Pullman Court and Park Court, Ellington Court forgoes the bright white render or exposed concrete construction in favour of a more suburban brick finish. Formed of two linked blocks, this building's modernity is saved for its bold concrete balconies and curved cantilever porches, along with its mixture of horizontal and vertical window strips. Unfortunately this careful detailing has been somewhat undermined by the exterior service pipes (stipulated by the council in the original planning agreement) and the more recent additional penthouse floor.

The Lawn, Harlow. Image from Conway.

In the post war years Gibberd’s firm expanded greatly, designing larger and more complex projects all over the country. However, one of his most notable projects in immediate post war years was another flat design, The Lawn at Harlow New Town (1951). Gibberd was the master planner of the new town in Essex and designed much of the housing. The Lawn was the first point block in the country, with the flats, specified for single people and couples, arranged around a central service core. The flats were also arranged in a butterfly plan, allowing every apartment a south facing living room.

His partnership would design a range of estates in the post war years featuring tower blocks and lower rise ranges of flats with schemes found in Hackney, Stoke Newington, Enfield, Leamington Spa, Harlow and elsewhere. Gibberd's career would also include prestigious projects such as Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral, Didcot Power Station and Heathrow Airport, but it was with the humble flat that he had his biggest influence.

Pullman Court, Park Court and Ellington Court are all featured in our Speculative Suburban Apartments mini guide alongside many other examples from all over suburban London. Get you copy right HERE

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The De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill on Sea

7/12/2025

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The De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill on Sea, East Sussex was officially opened on 12th December 1935 by the Duke and Duchess of York (the future King George VI and Queen Elizabeth). It had been commissioned by Herbrand Sackville, the 9th Earl De La Warr, who despite his title was an ardent socialist and the mayor of the town. He wanted a new building to include public entertainment and education facilities, and a competition was announced in the February 1934 edition of the Architects Journal, calling for entries. Over 230 were received with Thomas Tait of Burnet, Tait and Lorne acting as the assessor.

Plan of the ground floor of the De La Warr Pavilion

The winning design was produced by Serge Chermayeff and Erich Mendelsohn, during their brief partnership in Britain. Chermayeff was born in Grozny, before his family moved to Britain and he was sent to attendHarrow School. After completing his further education in various European countries, Chermayeff worked as a journalist and a designer, and then trained as an architect. Mendelsohn was one of the most prominent figures in European modernist design in the first decades of the 20th century, producing designs throughout Germany and also in the Soviet Union. He fled Nazi Germany for Britain in 1933, and went into partnership with Chermayeff.

The staircase and hanging light feature, as seen from below. Image from RIBApix.

The design the pair produced is one of the finest International Modernist buildings in Britain. It caused somewhat of a scandal when it was chosen by Tait, with a public enquiry called to examine how such a brazenly modernist scheme was chosen. But it was built, with only a few modifications, a vision of the future among the Edwardian townscape of Bexhill.

The auditorium. Image from RIBApix.

It consists of a two section building, joined in the middle by curved, projecting glazed staircases. The western half contains an assembly hall, with the eastern half originally housing a dance floor, library, conference hall, restaurant and a terrace area, spread out over two floors. The interior also features furniture designed by Alvar Aalto and a mural by Edward Wadsworth. The structure of the building consists of a welded steel frame, overseen by engineer Felix Samuely, with the concrete walls covered in smooth white render. The south staircase was designed with a long hanging pendulum light, designed by Chermayeff, (although reminiscent of Mendelsohn’s Trade Union Building in Berlin).

The sun terrace. Image from RIBApix.

Despite the public enquiry, the building was well received in the architectural press of the time and later. In the Buildings of England volume for Sussex, Ian Nairn called it “exhilarating”. Unfortunately the building was somewhat neglected and had fallen into disrepair by the 1970. In 1986 it was given Grade I listing, a high honour for a 20th century building, and a couple of years later a trust was formed to protect and renovate the pavilion. Over a decade later the Heritage Lottery Fund granted £6 million for its restoration and modernisation, reopening as an arts centre in 2005. A further £17 million has just been budgeted for further upgrades, including refurbishing the auditorium and upgrades for the 21st century.

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Anatomy of a House No.24: 9 West Heath Road

15/10/2025

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Anatomy of a House No.24

9 West Heath Road, Hampstead
1964
James Gowan

On the south west corner of Hampstead Heath, stands a building which at first appears like a small office block, despite its leafy, residential setting. It is in fact a house built for Chaim Schreiber, who had built the Schreiber furniture brand in Britain from 1957. It was designed by architect James Gowan, who had come to fame due to his partnership with James Stirling, who he first worked with at Lyons Israel and Ellis, later going into partnership together. Their short-lived partnership produced some of the most dynamic buildings of the era. Designs such as the Engineering Building at Leicester University and Langham House Close in Ham Common, reacted against cosy, Scandinavian-influenced post war modernism and firmly pushed into the future, and the era of brutalism and High Tech.

Sketch of the Leicester Engineering Building

The partnership only lasted from 1959 to 1963, splitting over creative differences, paving the way for bands of the late 1960s and 70s. Gowan's first commission after parting ways with Gowan was the house on West Heath Road. Before working at Lyons, Ellis and Israel, Gowan had worked for the Stevenage Development Corporation, and a former colleague who now worked for Schreiber phoned to ask his advice on a house for his boss. Gowan’s advice was ‘Let me design it’.
The house is formed of two oblong sections connected by a central core, built in dark blue Staffordshire brick, somewhat cooler than the famous red brick of the Leicester Engineering Building. Windows strips run all the way up the four floors of the house, emphasizing the verticality of the design. Schreiber and his wife, Sara, wanted the most important room in the house to be the dining area, able to accommodate up to 20 guests.

The living area with an example of the co-designed furniture by Gowan and Schreiber.

The dining room and connected living area form the heart of the house on the ground floor. Below on the basement level are the service rooms, with the main bedrooms on the first floor and bedrooms for Schreiber's three children and a studio on the second floor. The rooms on each floor were open plan, with hidden wooden doors used to divide space as needed. The house is arranged north-south, facing north towards Hampstead Heath. Gowan made the rooms extend the full width of the house, allowing the maximum daylight from the south facing aspect, which looks over the gardens. The internal floors were finished in San Stefano marble, with ceilings formed of moulded precast units. Engineering for the house was overseen by Frank Newby, who had worked with Gowan and Stirling on the Leicester Engineering Building.

The first and second floor plan for the house

Gowan also collaborated with Schreiber to design all the furniture in the house, to make it a totally integrated design. Four types of storage units were developed that could be used in all rooms, depending on need and layout. Various mod cons were included in the house, such as a central vacuum system to keep the house clean and electrically heated external paving stones to melt ice and snow. After completing the main house, Gowan returned three years later to design a domed swimming pool in the grounds of the house. The pool is partially sunken in a turf mound and topped by a glass dome. The dome is formed by a tubular steel structure with quarter inch thick late glass, attached to a concrete base. The pool itself is finished in white and black Sicilian marble and tilework in red, white and blue, and incorporates two smaller circular rooms containing changing rooms and toilets.

The dome-roofed swimming pool

Gowan would design another house for Schreiber in the early 1980s, radically different from the Hampstead home. This house, in Chester overlooking the River Dee, was designed in a post-modern style, a form his old partner Jim Stirling had also drifted into. The house in Chester has a large pitched roof that sits over a largely-glazed ground floor, with prominent circular windows. Apparently Schreiber never lived in this house, as he passed away in May 1984.

The second Schreiber house, in Chester. Image from OfHouses.

Gowan only designed a few private houses during his career, but they are all distinctive. One of his earliest houses was during his partnership with Stirling, a compact and austere single storey residence on the Isle of Wight from 1957, now unfortunately added with a pitched roof. In 1967, Gowan designed a circular, tower-shaped house for E.W. Parke, Professor of engineering at Leicester University in St. David’s, Wales. The house is built in brick which is rendered white, with a circular staircase tower. Also worth mentioning is the small estate of houses Gowan designed at East Hanningfield in Essex (1975). The scheme, which features houses and flats, is designed in the PoMo style seen with the second Schreiber house, complete with porthole windows and angular profiles.

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The Rolls Royce: Serge Chermayeff’s Bentley Wood

5/10/2025

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Bentley Wood as seen from the garden side. Image from RIBApix.

Serge Chermayeff designed a number of buildings in Britain, before moving to the United States in 1940. These buildings include private houses in Chelsea, Chalfont St Giles and Rugby, offices in Camden and the De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill on Sea. Some of these were designed with German architect Erich Mendelsohn, who was also a brief visitor to Britain before moving on to the US himself. The buildings that Chermayeff designed, both by himself and with Mendelsohn, are perfect examples of the 1930s modernist aesthetic; long horizontal lines, gleaming white walls and regular, metal-framed windows all abound.

The De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill on Sea. Designed by Serge Chermayeff and Erich Mendelsohn.

However, Chermayeff’s most accomplished design is possibly Bentley Wood, a house he built for himself and his family in Halland, East Sussex in 1938. The house is modernist in form, but uses a gentler array of materials, and is sensitively placed in its rural setting. Instead of the concrete of his earlier designs, Bentley Wood is built with a jarrah wood timber frame, exposed in parts, and clad in Western Red Cedar, with brick infill. The ground floor has floor to ceiling glazing, with sliding glass doors opening out onto the gardens.

A sketch for the interior of Bentley Wood by Serge Chermayeff.

The grounds themselves are as much a part of the design as the house. Chermayeff asked landscape designer Christopher Tunnard to oversee the landscaping, and a sculpture by Henry Moore, “Recumbent Figure”, was specially commissioned to stand at an exact spot at the end of the garden terrace (the piece was donated to the Tate gallery in 1939). The interior of the house is semi open plan and has split levels, giving the house a sense of flowing space, with further artworks by John Piper, Ben Nicholson and others, dotted around.

Henry Moore's Recumbent Figure, seen in the grounds of Bentley Wood. Image from RIBApix.

As with many modernist houses of the era, especially those in the countryside, its progress was initially blocked by Uckfield Rural District Council. They rejected the first application, feeling the design did not fit its rural setting, despite Chermayeff’s careful consideration of the landscape. The architect appealed, and permission for the house was granted. Bentley Wood was widely praised in the architectural press, being seen as a turn away from rigorous International style modernism, towards a more romantic style, as also seen in Berthold Lubetkin’s use of caryatids at Highpoint II. Architect Charles Reilly likened the house to a Rolls Royce in a review for the Architects Journal and it became a place to visit for architects and students.

The interior of the ground floor living area. Image from RIBApix.

Chermayeff only lived in his dream house for a short time, moving to the US after his practice was declared bankrupt. He would go on to practice in America as well as teaching at Yale. Bentley Wood was bought by newspaper editor Sir William Elmsley Carr, who started a process of extension and alteration, which was taken up by subsequent owners. These changes to Chermayeff’s original design meant Bentley Wood was turned down for listing in 2002. However, a later owner carefully removed much of the alteration and returned the house to Chermayeff’s vision, with a Grade II listing awarded in March 2020.

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Power to the People: The Rise of the Electricity Showroom

18/9/2025

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Showrooms & Offices, Westminster Electric Supply Co,Victoria Street (1933) Maxwell Fry. Image from RIBApix

In 1925 the London and Home Counties Joint Electricity Authority was formed to oversee the generation and supply of electricity in the capital. The use of electricity in domestic settings had started in the late 19th century, and grown in the first two decades of the 20th. Local power companies were formed and used small power stations to generate electricity for their local area. By 1910, 65 different private companies or local authorities supplied power in London, generated from around 70 small power stations. The new authority aimed to bring this all under one body. This new organisation was made up of 36 members, including the London Power Company, which brought another 10 power companies from west London, and the local authority companies, mainly from the east of the city.

Although a number had existed before this amalgamation, from 1925 the use of the electricity showroom was expanded across the city, with one found in most high streets, and at other locations. These showrooms sought to promote the use of domestic appliances that used electricity, as well as electric lighting and heating. Early showrooms were fitted into existing shop parades, but as art deco and modernism began to make its mark on the British consciousness, these styles were employed to denote the futuristic application of domestic electricity.

Strand Building,Clapton (1925) J.A. Bowden

The most renowned architect of the electricity showroom was Maxwell Fry, who designed a number of showrooms in the mid 1930s. Whereas early buildings specifically built to promote and demonstrate the use of electricity, like the Strand Building in Clapton (1925, J.A. Bowden) or Electric House, Bow Road (1925, Harry Heckford), used Classical or Neo-Georgian dressings, Fry’s showrooms utilized lightweight steel, plate glass and vitrolite. His first showroom in Victoria Street featured a streamlined entrance in metal-faced plywood with a neon name sign and was decorated inside with photomurals by designer Hazen Sise. Fry then redesigned a shop for the Chelsea Electricity Supply company in Sloane Street in 1936, adding a neon sign and large windows to the exterior.

Mortimer Gall Electrical Centre, Cannon Street (1937) Maxwell Fry and Walter Gropius. Image from RIBApix.

Fry designed two more showrooms; the Mortimer Gall Electrical Centre in Cannon Street (1937) and the Regent Street showrooms for the Central London Electricity Company (1938). The Cannon Street showrooms were designed when Fry was still in partnership with Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius, during the German’s brief stay in England. Like the Sloane Street design, it fits new wine into an old bottle, adding a shopfront in curved glass, black vitrolite and glass brick to an existing building. In Regent Street, Fry designed premises with a spectacular interior featuring a spiral metal staircase and a photographic display by Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, which showed the story of electrical production and supply.

Showrooms, Central London Electricity Company, Regent Street (1938) Maxwell Fry . Image from RIBApix

Elsewhere in the city and its suburbs were a number of other showrooms using art deco and modernism to make the case for the electric age. In the north west suburb of Willesden, the local architects department designed and built Electric House (the name given to many electricity showrooms) in 1937. The three storey building occupied a prominent corner site and featured a rounded staircase tower and finished inside with travertine terrazzo, maple wood flooring and oblong light fittings, Unfortunately the building was demolished in 2014. A little further to the east is Hornsey Town Hall, opened in 1935 and designed by Reginald H. Uren. The town hall is flanked by two sets of showrooms, an electricity one by Uren (1938), and one for gas appliances by Dawe and Carter (1937). Both ranges were built in the same sober brick idiom as the civic buildings, but the gas showrooms feature curved windows and a series of stone reliefs by A.J. Ayres, who also contributed a brick relief to the electric side. The town hall and the two showrooms are all listed by Historic England.

Electric House, Willesden (1937) F. Wayman Brown, F. Wilkinson and Percy Johnson-Marshall. Image from RIBApix.

In nearby Wood Green are the showrooms and offices of the North Metropolitan Electric Power Supply Company, from 1930. In profile the building isn't as modernist as those in Willesden or Hornsey with its pitched roof, but it does have some lovely art deco detailing with underground style roundels across the exterior proclaiming ‘lighting’, ‘heating’, ‘cooking’ and ‘power’. In a similar mode are the former Gas Light and Coke showrooms in Edgware, designed by Welch, Cachemaille-Day and Lander in 1937. The showrooms were fitted into an existing Neo-Georgian parade, but the partnership added deco details such as chunky name signs, streamlined lighting and doors with half moon windows. Those moderne details are now gone, and the shop is now a Starbucks.

Gas Light & Coke Showrroms, Leytonstone (1937) G.Grey Wornum. Image from RIBApix.

The eastern suburbs largely had their electricity and gas supplied by municipal companies but they also built a large number of showrooms to promote the new power sources. In Leytonstone are the former Gas showrooms at 678 Leytonstone High Road, designed by esteemed architect George Grey Wornum, who fitted out the interior with relief lettering spelling out Gas Light & Coke, now long gone. The Neo-Georgian ground floor of the 1934 library around the corner was home to the electricity showrooms. Electricity offices for East Ham Borough were designed by N.F. Cachemaille-Day who added a frontage in black terrazzo and glass with bronze detailing, now demolished. One former showroom which still exists is that for Ilford, on the junction of the HIgh Road and Clark’s Road. Designed in 1931 by borough architect L.E.J. Reynolds, the building has a nice deco styled corner entrance and windows with metal reliefs on the first floor.

Electricity offices for East Ham Borough, by N.F. Cachmaille Day.

Moving around the compass to the south, amidst the high rises of Croydon we find the Electricity showrooms and offices on Wellesley Road by Robert Atkinson, built between 1939-42. Like the Ilford building, it sits on a corner plot, although it is much larger and grander in scale, finished in Portland stone and featuring double height windows along the street level. Just along from this building are the moderne, former Segas Offices (1939-41), designed by William Newton for the Croydon Gas and Coke Company. Both buildings are listed, but the electricity office is in much better shape these days.

Segas Offices, Croydon (1939-41) William Newton

Completing our journey in the south western reaches we find a pair of buildings featuring the work of architect J.E. Franck and artist Percy George Bentham. On York Street in Twickenham is the South Eastern Electricity Board Building, designed by Franck with stone relief by Bentham. The building again occupies a prominent corner site and is made more conspicuous by its art deco style clocktower, reminiscent of a bypass factory of the age. The work of the pair can also be found on a much smaller scale on Portsmouth Road in Kingston upon Thames (1935), where we find a substation, compact in size but still featuring the stylized light bulb and lightning bolts above the doorway by Bentham.

Electricity and gas showrooms continued to be a fixture of the high street after World War II, but the stylized deco details gave way to a more austere modernist palette. Soon even the later buildings disappeared, although some have (just about) survived such as former London Electricity Board showrooms and offices on Cambridge Heath Road (1959) by Watson & Coates. As you can see from this blog the novelty of domestic electricity may have faded but some pieces of the Electric Age still remain.

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Anatomy of a House No.26: New Ways, Northampton

Anatomy of a House No.26

New Ways, Northampton
1926
Peter Behrens

The Village of Tomorrow

The Inbetweeners: Ealing Common and Hounslow West

Anatomy of a House No.25: Sewell's Orchard, Tewin

Anatomy of a House No.25

Sewell's Orchard, Tewin, Hertfordshire
1936
Mary Crowley

The Archer

Frederick Gibberd and The Modern Flat

The De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill on Sea

Anatomy of a House No.24: 9 West Heath Road

Anatomy of a House No.24

9 West Heath Road, Hampstead
1964
James Gowan

The Rolls Royce: Serge Chermayeff’s Bentley Wood

Power to the People: The Rise of the Electricity Showroom

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Anatomy of a House No.26 New Ways, Northampton 1926 Peter Behrens

Anatomy of a House No.25 Sewell's Orchard, Tewin, Hertfordshire 1936 Mary Crowley

Anatomy of a House No.24 9 West Heath Road, Hampstead 1964 James Gowan

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Categories

Anatomy of a House No.26

New Ways, Northampton
1926
Peter Behrens

Anatomy of a House No.25

Sewell's Orchard, Tewin, Hertfordshire
1936
Mary Crowley

Anatomy of a House No.24

9 West Heath Road, Hampstead
1964
James Gowan