Anatomy of a House No.16: Winscombe Street

The north-facing street frontage of 22-32 Winscombe Street

Anatomy of a House No.16

22-32 Winscombe Street, Camden
1963-66
Neave Brown

Architect Neave Brown is best known for his megastructure estates designed for Camden Boroughs Architects department under Sydney Cook, Alexandra Road and Dunboyne Road, both now listed. Also listed is his first significant project, a terrace of houses at Winscombe Street, just south of Highgate Cemetery. It was built for the Pentad Housing Society, an housing association formed by Brown and four of his friends and their families, looking to create an affordable yet experimental scheme at the end of a road of Victorian houses. The other members of the association included engineer Tony Hunt, and later on architect Edward Jones and Michael and Patty Hopkins. The group decided that the layout of the homes had to suit each family, and also that there would be a community aspect to the scheme.

The south-facing garden side of the Winscombe St terrace with communal garden area. Image from RIBApix.

Brown was born in Utica, New York on 22nd May 1929, his mother being American and his father British. He lived in the US until 1945 when he attended Marlborough College, before performing his national service. After that he studied architecture at the Architectural Association, alongside John Miller, Kenneth Frampton, George Finch and Patrick Hodgkinson. After graduating Brown designed a hospital in Tanzania for the American Methodist Medical Mission and then went to work for Lyons Israel Ellis, a hotbed of young designers like James Stirling, James Gowan and Alan Colquhoun, who helped change the firm's output from genteel Scandi modernism to hard nosed brutalism. Brown then went to Middlesex County Council, designing five primary schools, whilst also teaching nights at Regent Street Polytechnic. He then went into private practice, with Winscombe Street being his first significant solo project. 

An axnometric drawing of the Winscombe St terrace

Brown met with each family separately to establish what they wanted for their home. In the end, the internal designs Brown produced for each house were identical, the families requirements overlapping significantly. The homes form a terrace of five houses and a studio, three storeys in height, with the gardens facing south. They are built in a combination of concrete, brick, timber and glass brick, with dark-stained timber windows.The houses are entered at first floor level via a concrete spiral staircase. The layout of the five houses has the main bedroom and living space on the top floor, the kitchen and dining area on the first floor and the ground floor for children's bedrooms and garden access. The floors are connected internally by a wooden staircase, which with the metal front stairs and rear steel stairs, forms a trio of spiral staircases.

The internal timber staircase connecting all floors in each terraced house. Image from RIBApix.

The plot for the terrace was purchased in 1964 thanks to a 100% loan from Camden council, but construction was delayed as Brown took up a part time teaching post at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. Building finally began in 1965, with the families moving in the following year. The interiors were finished simply, with plywood floors, whitewashed walls and ceramic tiles in the kitchen and bathrooms. The rooms are divided by sliding partitions, allowing flexibility in expanding and contracting space depending on necessity.

​The homes were heated electrically through a system devised by engineer Max Fordham, who would go on to work on Brown's Alexandra Road estate for Camden Borough, with the overall engineering scheme under the control of Tony Hunt. Brown intended the houses to have a mix of communal and private spaces. This idea shows itself in the journey through the house from front to back as the shared front courtyard gives way to the private space of the house and back to a communal area for the garden. The garden had originally been a fairly small area, but the group managed to acquire the land to the rear of the houses, an old tennis court, and expand the gardens into it. 

The Alexandra Road Estate at Swiss Cottage. Image from Art and Architecture.

As a result of the Winscombe Street project, Brown joined the architects department of the newly formed Camden Borough Council under Sydney Cook. There he designed two projects that would define his work, the Fleet Road (later Dunboyne Road) estate at Gospel Oak and the Alexandra Road scheme at Swiss Cottage. Both projects would use elements first trialed at Winscombe Road; the flexible interiors separated by sliding partitions, a mixture of communal and private spaces, and the use of concrete alongside softer material like timber. As the political and public perception of large estates changed through the 1970s, Brown’s projects, especially Alexandra Road were called into question with a public inquiry held into the scheme. 

The Fleet Road (later Dunboyne Road) estate at Gospel Oak. Image from RIBApix.

After this experience, Brown went into private practice, designing large projects in Zwolsestraat and Eindhoven the Netherlands and a handful of schemes in Bergamo, Italy, as well as continuing his teaching. Brown remained living at Winscombe Road until 2006, when he moved to one of his other creations Dunboyne Road, where he spent the last years of his life, passing away in 2018, a year after being awarded the RIBA Gold Medal. Winscombe Street was listed in September 2014, joining Alexandra Road (listed August 1993) and Dunboyne Road (August 2010). 

References
Historic England Listing https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1410085?section=official-list-entry 

​AA files 67: Neave Brown in Conversation with Mark Swenarton and Thomas Weaver 2013

Cook’s Camden by Mark Swenarton

Architects' London Houses - The Homes of Thirty Architects Since the 1930's by Miranda Newton