Description

TQ 2678 SE CHELSEA SQUARE, SW3

249/55/34 No. 41

GV 6/7/81 II

Private house. 1934, by Oliver Hill Freda, Lady Forbes. White-painted stucco house, neo-Georgian in style, square in plan with cruciform upper storey. Two storeys and semi-basement. Low-pitched tiled roofs with pedimented gables and 2 tall chimney stacks. Flight of steps, with decorative fretwork railing and lamp standard up to central entrance with bracketed cornice-hood. Sash windows with glazing bars: segmental-headed to semi-basement, square-headed to upper storey. Symmetry of main facade broken by variety of window-shapes and types to ground floor: segmental-headed with shutters, square-headed and round. Main facade to south (garden) side, with oval oculus in gable, echoing the pediment of No 40, with which this house forms a picturesque ensemble. Main facade to south side.

Interior retains original staircase hall with deep coved ceiling. Open-well staircase rises up five steps, then turns through ninety degrees and rises to projecting, curved landing. Each step treated as a separate horizontal motif to side, with wide-spaced twisted balusters. Stair to basement retains the original fretwork balustrading but is reversed. Entrance hall leads to dining room, designed to house Lady Forbes's Aubusson tapestries and with jib door and early-C18-style fireplace. The entrance hall and living room remodelled with paired dentiled cornices by Sir Nigel Boakes, who added a charming double-height garden room in neo-Gothick style, designed by Chapman Taylor c.1980. On the first floor the principal bedroom retains its original high cove which incorporates the gable oculus.

Source: Country Life, 16 February 1935, pp.168-172.

Listing NGR: TQ2689978154

External Links

• Historic England Listing
• Wikidata Q26484743

External links are from the relevant listing authority and, where applicable, Wikidata. Wikidata IDs may be related buildings as well as this specific building. If you want to add or update a link, you will need to do so by editing the Wikidata entry.

Recommended Books

• 
  Hampshire: Winchester and the North (The Buildings of England) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Historic Environment Law: Planning, Listed Buildings, Monuments, Conservation Areas and Objects, Supplement 2014
• 
  Gwent/Monmouthshire (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of Wales)
• 
  Listed Buildings, Conservation Areas and Monuments
• 
  Renovating Old Houses: Bringing New Life to Vintage Homes (For Pros By Pros)
• 
  Pevsner's Architectural Glossary (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Introductions)