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

15/10/2025

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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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

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Anatomy of a House No.24

9 West Heath Road, Hampstead
1964
James Gowan