The borough’s own architects department also took inspiration from Segal's ideas, with the scheme at Brockley Park, next to Segal Close, designed by Geoffrey Wigfall, using mono pitched homes built in brick and finished with timber cladding and grass roofs. Some of the houses feature “pods” at the front, to be used for extra living or storage space, and the estate is grouped around a large green space. ​

Segal passed away in 1985 but his ideas persisted with self build projects appearing all around the capital's suburbs, with collaborator Jon Broome continuing the philosophy with his own practice Architype. Self-built projects can be found at Headway Gardens in Walthamstow, Parish Gardens in Greenwich, Eridge Green Close in Bromley and opposite Segal Close in Brockley Park, as well as at many other sites around the suburbs. ​

The Rayners Lane Grosvenor Cinema opened on 12th October 1936, with a showing of ‘The Country Doctor’ starring Jean Hersholt. The cinema was part of the small Hammond Dawes circuit, and was partially paid for by the housing developers T.F. Nash, who had built Harrow Garden Village at Rayners Lane from 1929 and wanted suitable attractions to entice new suburbanites to the development. The new cinema was designed by architect Frank Ernest Bromige, who had previously designed a number of cinemas, including the streamlined Dominion Southall (1936, now demolished) and the Dominion in Harrow, with its curving facade hidden until its recent restoration. ​

For the cinema at Rayners Lane, Bromige produced one of his, and suburban cinemas, most memorable designs. The cinema is built as part of a typical interwar parade, opposite Rayners Lane Underground Station, which was rebuilt in 1938 by R.H. Uren and Charles Holden. The frontage has a three part facade made up of two tall large glass convex sections which flank a large central concave window above the entrance. In front of this concave window is a curved vertical concrete feature, often said to resemble an elephant's trunk. Bromige actually referred to this feature as a stylised question mark, but the association with an elephant's trunk has stuck. The feature was highlighted with neon lighting, and in front of it was a revolving vertical name sign, with GROSVENOR spelt out in chunky letters.

The Sun House is neither of those things, firmly designed in the International Style of modernism, with its flat roof, bright white walls and tubular steel balconies. Unlike many modernist houses of the 1930s, the Sun House was actually built in concrete, rather than brick covered in white render. The south-facing, front facade is dominated by the curved projecting canopy on the right hand side, and two horizontal strips of sliding windows. The front balcony and sun roof terrace exemplify the idea of the time that many maladies, both physical and mental, could be cured by extra sunlight and air. A garage is integrated into the ground floor, accessed by a short, steep driveway. ​

The National Recreation Centre in Crystal Palace Park was officially opened on 13th July 1964 by the Duke of Edinburgh (who had his arm in a sling due to a polo accident). The decade earlier, Crystal Palace Park was derelict. It had formerly been the home of Joseph Paxton's Crystal Palace, first erected at Hyde Park for the 1851 Great Exhibition, then moved south in 1854, where it stood until it caught fire and collapsed in November 1936. Sir Gerald Barry, who had just overseen the 1951 Festival of Britain, was given the task of coming up with a use for the area. At first an exhibition centre was proposed to fill the site, before the counter idea of a National Sports Centre won out. ​

They then let me and all these people trample around their garden and peer into their kitchen. I carried on the tour which went to the top of Stanmore Hill and back again to the station, with everyone very pleased to have seen inside one of the houses. They kindly repeated hospitality for the second tour, and for a couple of years after that as I guided the tour for Open House, in later years waving from the kitchen as I dragged my guidees onto their driveway. I will always remember the kindness and generosity of Cherrill and Ian on that first tour and afterwards.

Cherrill had a distinguished career as part of the Hille company, launching the Robin Day Poly Chair in 1963. Hille of course had offices and showrooms designed by Erno Goldfinger in Watford and by Peter Moro in Albemarle Street, Westminster. You can read more about Cherrill’s life and career HERE and HERE.

In the Barkingside area of Redbridge is the former Dr Johnson pub, now a mini supermarket. It was designed by H. Reginald Ross for Barclay Perkins in 1938. Once again designed in a hybrid between the newer style of Art Deco and more traditional Arts & Crafts forms, the building features lovely touches such as the ironwork balconies and a stone relief of Dr Johnson, by Arthur Betts.The pub also featured an “off sales” section where customers could purchase alcohol to take out of the premises. Sometimes this was situated inside the main pub, but at the Dr Johnson it was a separate building, a one-storey unit with a pitched roof, now occupied by a barbers. ​

The name (or at least surname) of Michael Manser has become synonymous with beautifully-designed high end houses built for discerning clients. This comes from both his career from the early 1960s, and from the award named after him. For this edition of our Anatomy of a House blog, we will be examining a home designed by his practice that bears all the hallmarks of his design tenets. Weston Point sits on a private road in Belmont, a suburb south of Sutton town centre. It is starkly different to its neighbouring houses, mostly a bric-a-brac of pre-20th century references, instead taking its cues from the cooly modern Californian Case Study houses of the 1950s. ​

The house is single storey, and arranged in a U-Plan, roughly in the middle of the rectangular plot, with a courtyard garden facing south. The house is constructed with an exposed steel frame, with a windowless, brickwork front to the street and glazed walls on the garden and courtyard sides. Internally the house is laid out with a large open plan living area which adjoins the kitchen. On the other side of the courtyard are two double-bedrooms, a study and an integrated double garage. The Armstrongs brought some period furniture from their previous, neo-Tudor home, as well as buying some more contemporary pieces to match the architecture. ​

On the first floor are the separate bedrooms of Virginia and Stephen, along with bedrooms for Virginia’s nephews, Peter and Paul Peirano, and the quarters of the Courtaulds pet lemur, Mah-Jongg. Virginia’s room continues the circular established by the entrance hall. Designed by Piero Malacrida, it features a curved wall, lined with maple flexwood, and a circular ceiling, which contains both lighting and heating. The bathroom is even more spectacular, with a vaulted ceiling, walls of onyx and a bath niche of gold mosaic featuring a statue of the goddess Psyche. The basement contained an assortment of more practical rooms including a photographic darkroom, cellar, larder, a billiards room and a playroom. ​

The building that brought him into the public eye were the Isokon apartments in Belsize Park. Designed for Jack & Molly Pritchard of the Isokon furniture company, the building provided inexpensive flats for young professionals, with 22 flats for single people, named “minimum” apartments, as well as a penthouse apartment occupied by the Pritchards. During the development of the Isokon, Coates formed a working partnership with David Pleydell-Bouverie. Pleydell-Bouverie was born in 1911 into a well to do family (he was the grandson of the 5th Earl of Radnor). Together they developed the Sunspan House idea for the 1934 Ideal Home Exhibition at Olympia in Kensington. 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.