Description

TQ 2978 NW WESTMINSTER CHARLWOOD STREET
(south east side)

104/10137 Number 4,
Repton House

GV II*

Block of sixteen scissor-plan three-bedroom flats, two one-bedroom flats and two bedsits over basement garage. Design won in competition in 1961 by John Darbourne, scheme built 1964-8 (phase I) by Darbourne and Geoffrey Darke for Westminster City Council. In-situ reinforced concrete beams and floors, exposed on the elevations and projecting balconies, and load-bearing brick crosswalls. Elevations of multi-red hand-made facing bricks, with raked joints. Flat felted roof. Complex plan. Ground floor open over basement garage, the block being supported on concrete pilotis. Above the flats arranged in a scissor plan, with six floors facing Charlwood Street and five overlooking internal gardens. The second floor on the Charlwood Street elevation comprises an access gallery with planting boxes, but no corresponding level of flats on the garden front. Access gallery on fifth floor corresponds with level of one-bedroom flats and bedsits on garden front. At southern end Repton House abuts Forsyth House and the Pimlico Tram Public House (see separate item), and shares with Forsyth House a dog-leg stair with tiled steps and timber balustrade. Elevations in similar style to rest of estate. On the Charlwood Street elevation the access galleries project very slightly, with overhanging planting. On the other floors the smaller, alternating bedrooms project, whilst the master bedrooms are recessed. On the garden elevations there are balconies inset parallel to the kitchens, whilst the extra bedrooms to each alternate flat are recessed. All windows are dark stained timber double-glazed windows (original), with vertical opening casements. All doors originally also of black-stained timber, and most remain. Public spaces lined with brick paviours, with shallow brick walls to the planting troughs. Original metal signage of black lettering on silvered backgrounds. Interiors not of special interest. John Darbourne won a competition for the rebuilding of Lillington Street in 1961, and formed a partnership with Geoffrey Darke to develop the scheme. The design of Lillington took its cue from the important (grade I listed) Church of St James the Less, with its striking Victorian red brick, which the estate surrounds. Architects like James Stirling and James Gowan at Ham Common, Richmond; Leslie Martin at Cambridge University and Basil Spence at Sussex University, Brighton, had begun to explore ways of unsing a combination of brick and concrete, but not on such a scale or with such intensity of colour or complexity of form. Martin and his proteges had also begun to theorise on the possibilities of low-rise high-density housing in their Bloomsbury project and in their college work at Cambridge, but Lillington was the first low-rise high-density public housing scheme to be built. Lillington Gardens was epoch making. 'The blocks are more reminiscent of the college campus than of municipal tenements' (Architects' Journal, 1 July 1970). It influenced the style of council housing from the mid-1960s until the early 1980s. The scheme won a Housing Design award in 1969, a Ministry of Housing and Local Government award for good design in 1970, an RIBA Architecture Award in 1970 and a further RIBA commendation in 1973. 'An elegant and exciting environment for young and old' (The Times, 13 September 1972).

Listing NGR: TQ2943578559

External Links

• Historic England Listing
• Wikidata Q17550202

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

• 
  Nottinghamshire (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Harrow on the Hill: A photographic portrayal of listed buildings and structures (Historic Buildings Picture Guides)
• 
  Pioneers of Modern Design: From William Morris to Walter Gropius (Penguin Art & Architecture)
• 
  Listed Buildings: The Law and Practice of History Buildings, Ancient Monuments and Conservation Areas
• 
  Cumbria: Cumberland, Westmorland and Furness (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Berkshire (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)