 A poster advertising the Morden extension. Image from London Transport Museum Collection. Charles Holden’s work on the Piccadilly Line for London Transport produced some of the first and finest public modernist buildings in Britain. From the early stations at Ealing Common and Hounslow West, through to his first ‘box’ at Sudbury Town and onto his work along the Cockfosters extensions, Holden redefined the tube station bringing modernity to the suburbs. Holden had been recruited in the early 1920s by Frank Pick, at that point with the Underground Electric Railways of London (UERL), to design a new set of stations for the extension of what would become the Northern Line to Morden. At the time the line was part of the City and South London railway, one of the lines bought up by the UERL in its expansionist period, and earmarked for extension to try and increase passenger numbers.  A poster showing the building of the new line. Image from London Transport Museum Collection. An Act of Parliament was passed in 1923 to extend the line from Clapham Common to Morden, with an additional plan to build a surface rail to connect Morden with Sutton. This section was cancelled after an agreement couldn't be found with Southern Railways who had the rights to the train services there. Holden was tasked with designing seven new stations and a depot at Morden. Tunnelling for the 5 mile extension began on 31st December 1923 and took until September 1926. When completed, this section was the longest underground railway in the world. The stations for this stretch of line were Holden’s first complete group, although he had designed new entrances for Westminster and Clapham Common previously. Taking influence from the ideas of earlier tube architect Leslie Green, who had used a standard design that could be replicated at various sites, Holden devised a facade in three sections that could be adapted to any plot. Holden had the facade to be used at Clapham South built as a mock up in timber for inspection by the UERL directors at Earl’s Court exhibition centre.  The mock up station entrance to Clapham South, built at Earls Court. Image from London Transport Museum. Unlike most of the later stations on the Piccadilly Line extensions, these new station buildings had to fit into an already existing urban fabric. Clapham South became part of the street parade along Balham Hill, initially as a standalone station, with an apartment block, Westbury Court, appearing over and around the station a few years later. This concept of selling the air rights to a building for development was common with a number of early tube stations, especially along the Central London Railway, at stations like Queensway, and was used at Morden on this extension. The next two stations on the line, Balham and Tooting Bec (opened as Trinity Road), each have two separate entrances, allowing access to passengers at busy road junctions. Tooting Broadway and South Wimbledon both have curved facades that fit into their respective street parades, a contrast to the other stations where the three part screens are angled. Colliers Wood has an angled facade with one street entrance.  An early sketch by Charles Holden for South Wimbledon station. Image from RIBApix. The stations were built in brick with Portland Stone facades, all with large central windows to allow light into the ticket hall. These windows were decorated with coloured roundels, with all signage in the stations in Johnston font, a first step in harmonizing the visual identity of the underground, or UndergrounD as the station signs had it. Inside, the ticket halls were illuminated by ironwork art deco chandeliers, and were spacious and finished in a simple palette. Illumination was a large part of the new design. The stations were to act as adverts for the underground service at night, with light projectioning through the ticket hall windows with the roundel in the centre.The passageways and platform areas had tilework designed by Harold Stabler, with a mixture of white, green, grey and mauve.  One entrance at Trinity Road station (later renamed Tooting Bec). Image from RIBApix. The modernity and clean lines of the Morden extension stations presented a clear contrast with those built for the other end of this railway, between Brent Cross and Edgware. These had been opened in 1923, only 3 years before the extension from Clapham Common, but were very different in approach, designed by the company's in-house architect Stanley Heaps in a quietly suburban manner, with pantiled roofs and colonnaded entrances. Indeed, Heaps’ department produced some designs for the Morden extension, very much in the vein of the Edgware section, with Neo-Georgian frontages. The UERL decided to go with the new spirit of the age, and the Morden extension stations opened on 13th September 1926 (apart from Balham which did not open until 6th December due to a labour dispute). Holden would go on to refine this station design at Hounslow West and Ealing Common, before moving onto to his Sudbury Box and then to the Cockfosters extension stations, and the Morden extension stations go on carrying passengers 100 years after they first headed south for the first time.
0 Comments
 The subdued facade of the Muswell Hill Odeon. Image from RIBApix. The Odeon cinema at Muswell Hill opened on 9th September 1936, with the first film shown being “Educated Evans”, starring Max Miller, a now lost piece of cinema heritage. Luckily for us, this cinema is not lost. On the contrary, unlike many cinemas of its era, it is still showing films as part of the Everyman chain. The cinema sits on Fortis Green Road, part of an interwar parade, all designed by architect George Coles. Coles, born in Leyton in 1884, had trained as an architect, going into partnership with Percy Adams in 1912, before setting up in practice himself in 1925. He designed cinemas for the Gaumont chain, later becoming architect for Odeon. The chain had been founded in 1928 by Oscar Deutsch, and from 1930 began opening cinemas with the Odeon brand. A number of architects designed for the chain including Harry Weedon and Andrew Mather, with Coles designing cinemas for them from 1933.  The auditorium at Muswell Hill Odeon. Image from RIBApix. The Muswell Hill neighbourhood had been home to two early cinemas, the Atheneum Picture Playhouse on Fortis Green Road and the Summerlands Electric Theatre, both from the start of the 20th century. Cinema design had changed since the early days of the silver screen, with chains employing architects to produce fantastical buildings that borrowed freely from around the world, hence many suburban streets were home to cinemas dressed up as Chinese pagoda (such as Coles’ Himalayan Palace in Southall), Moorish temples and Egyptian palaces. This outlandish approach was not welcomed by the respectable neighbourhood of Muswell Hill, especially the church of St. James, opposite the new site, and so Coles designed a pared down facade for the new cinema. The cinema's entrance curves around a corner, clad in cream faience tiles in the centre and black tiles either side. The ODEON sign originally sat just above the wooden doorways, in rather small letters compared to some other cinemas of its period.  The foyer with the central ticket booth. Image from RIBApix. Inside, a more expressive design was used. The foyer is double height, with horizontal streamlined decoration moving around the room, creating dynamic visual rhythm. The original ticket office was an octagonal booth in the centre of the foyer, placed inside a circular decoration on the floor. Two tall pillars flank the bottom of the stairs to the upper tiers, and the dynamic motif is carried through to the auditorium where lines along the ceiling arrive at the screen, designed to resemble a roll of film. The side walls of the auditorium also have horizontal decoration running around the perimeter, and there are octagonal clocks over the exit doors. At the same time Coles was designing the cinema for Muswell Hill, he was also producing the Odeon cinema in Ipswich, which opened the same day and featured a similar design for its interior.  The auditorium seen from the lower seats. Image from Historic England. The ABC chain also opened a cinema in Muswell Hill in 1936, just three months after the Odeon opened. The Ritz was designed by the chain’s in-house architect, William R. Glen, and located a few minutes from the George Coles cinema. The Ritz closed down in 1978 and was demolished two years later. The Odeon cinema operated for just under 80 years. In 1974 two more screens were added under the balcony, and in March 1984 the building was Grade II listed. The cinema was purchased by the Everyman chain in April 2015, along with Odeon’s in Gerrards Cross, Esher and Barnet. Some internal changes have taken place but it stillI remains showing films to this day. The Muswell Hill cinema and many others are featured in A Guide to Modernism in Metro-Land. Available to order HERE
 The Sugden House, Watford (1956). Image from RIBApix. 1956 was a pivotal year for housing in Britain. As the London County Council Architects Department swung from polite Scandi modern to full on Beton Brut at the Alton West Estate, the private house also started to move towards a new architecture. Immediately post World War II, the building licences required to build new houses were hard to come by due to material shortages, but by the mid-1950s things had eased. Materials were still difficult to find but a new generation of architects were able to put their ideas into practice using found materials and war damaged sites.  The New Brutalism article, Architectural Review December 1955 The generation of architects who graduated after the war had the advantage of jobs being available at the LCC, soon to be the largest architectural organization in the world. The likes of Alison and Peter Smithson, Colin St Wilson, Stanley Amis and Bill & Gillian Howell all worked at the LCC Housing department, designing estates across the bomb-scarred capital. They would all design houses completed in 1956, using available materials to create houses in what would be called the New Brutalism. The phrase had been brought to the public's attention first by the Smithsons and then by journalist Reyner Banham in an article in the Architectural Review in December 1955, describing buildings built with available materials in a stripped down style.  A House in Soho, designed by Alison and Peter Smithson, 1953. The houses designed by the architects mentioned and others in 1956, fit this early definition of Brutalism. The Smithsons, who only worked briefly at the LCC, designed a house on the outskirts of Watford for Arup engineer Derek Sugden. Built in reclaimed stock brick and featuring a tiled, cat slide roof, the house appears quite conventional for two Enfant Terribles of architecture. However, a closer look shows how the regular idea of a two storey house could be pulled into an irregular shape to fit the inhabitants requirements.  The start of Theo Crosby's house on Rutland Grove, Hammersmith, Image from the Daily Telegraph. The duo had designed an unbuilt house for themselves in Soho in 1953, a four storey house in brick, timber and concrete fitted into a bomb damaged terrace. Although it did not come to fruition, it would provide a blueprint for them and others over the next decade and beyond. Friend of the Smithsons, designer Theo Crosby rebuilt a former stables on Rutland Grove in Hammersmith, first creating a studio and then a family home that he would extend through to the mid-1960s, through ad hoc extensions and intervention using materials borrowed, begged and bought. Elsewhere, perhaps less noisily, others trod the same path as the Smithsons. In Hereford Square, South Kensington, Colin St John Wilson and Arthur Baker designed an uncompromising extension to a Victorian terrace in brick and exposed concrete. The new buildings replaced a bombed section of houses, but instead of copying the destroyed stucco houses, Wilson and Baker designed a five storey section of flats and maisonettes in brick with an exposed concrete frame. The building was Grade II listed in 2007, but this recognition was withdrawn and in November 2008 the listing was withdrawn, and the 1956 building was demolished.  The interior of one the houses on South Hill Park. Image from RIBApix. On South Hill Park in Hampstead, Stanley Amis and Bill & Gillian Howell designed a small terrace of homes on the Victorian-era street that had also been damaged by bombing in World War II. The architects met whilst working for the LCC, where they were part of the Alton West design team. They formed a small housing association with friends who were looking for homes in London, designing six houses of four storeys, built in Felton brick, concrete and timber joinery. Each house was given variations to fit in with the needs of the occupying family.  Erno Goldfinger's sketch of his design at 10 Regents Park Road. On the same road, architect Erno Goldfinger designed a house for architectural historian John Summerson in 1948, but it was not built. However, Goldfinger did complete a scheme in 1956 using a similar housing association model to the South Hill Park terrace. 10 Regents Park Road is a block of flats built with an exposed concrete frame, finished with wire brushing, brick infill and timber cladding. The design signposts a change in Goldfingers designs, away from his early small scale international modernist buildings towards the larger more monumental works of his later career.  The caretakers house at Bousfield Primary School by Chamberlin, Powell and Bon. Image from RIBApix. Two other projects from 1956 designed by partnerships that would be better known for the larger, later projects can be found in Kensington and on the Isle of Wight. Bousfield Primary School in Earl’s Court was designed by Chamberlain Powell and Bon, first known for the Golden Lane Estate and later for the Barbican. As part of the school scheme, they designed a caretaker's house in brick with large horizontal windows, a miniature version of the style employed for the school buildings. In Cowes on the Isle of Wight, James Gowan and James Stirling designed a thoroughly modernist bungalow in light brick, concrete blocks and timber doors and windows, laid on a ten foot grid. The bungalow has now been altered, including having a pitched roof added. Their project at Ham Common, Langham House Close, built with a forceful exposed concrete frame and other brutalist touches, would be completed the following year.  A drawing of the house in the Isle of Wight, designed by Gowan and Stirling. However, the most popular home of 1956 would be found on the other side of Ham Common,more influenced by Scandinavian modernism than the Beton Brut. The Span home was developed by Eric Lyons and Partners, and consisted of small, flat roofed tile hung homes as seen on the Span estate at Parkleys, Ham Common near Richmond upon Thames. Parkleys would prove to be the first large estate by Span, and many others would follow over the next three decades, with developments built all over suburban London and the south east of England. Their design would also prove popular with other speculative house builders like Wates and Wimpey, who would provide their own version of the Span home all over the country.
1956 saw an outbreak of houses showing the influence of brutalism and its creed of truth to materials, reflected in their unvarnished finishes and use of found materials. While a few have been altered or demolished,most have stood the test of time, and in some cases are listed, reminders of the origins of brutalism. Anatomy of a House No.28 |
Archives
September 2026
Categories |
RSS Feed