Description

TQ 2978 SE WESTMINSTER MORETON STREET
(west side)

110/10140 Stourhead House and
Pride of Pimlico PH

GV II*

The northern section of Stourhead House, comprising 38 flats and maisonettes, a public house and two shops over basement carpark. Design won in competition 1961 by John Darbourne, this block built 1967-70 (as part of phase II) 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. Three tiers of maisonettes in scissor plan, with six storeys to gardens and five floors on raised plinth to Tachbrook Street. Lowest level of three- and four-maisonettes through gardens set on raised walkway in Tachbrook Street. Above are two levels of three-bedroom maisonettes reached via third-floor access walkway, with broad planting areas. Some upper maisonettes with roof gardens. This walkway, with its two levels of maisonettes continues as bridge over two-storey opening over Moreton Street. Extra flat, No. 8, set to side. To south of Moreton Street the lowest tier of two-storey maisonettes replaced by the Pride of Pimlico Public House, with publican's flat over, and two shops with flats over, reached via their own narrow walkway on first floor. In elevation the maisonettes resemble those in Forsyth House, with which it forms a continuous stepped wall along Tachbrook Street. Tachbrook Street elevation with balconies on second-floor, the uppermost two floors have the same, and a stronger, rhythmic alternation of projecting and receding rooms. The gardens elevation with projecting fourth floor. Dark stained timber double-glazed windows (original), wit vertical opening casements. All doors originally also of black-stained timber, and most remain. Public spaces lined with brick paviours, and with shallow brick walls to the planting troughs. High lift lobby lined in brick has dog-leg stair with timber balustrade. Original metal signage of black lettering on silvered backgrounds. Public House on the corner of Moreton Street with timber windows and fascias; its interior remodelled and not of special interest. The shopfronts to Nos. 87 and 89 Tachbrook Street also renewed. Interiors of maisonettes not of special interest. South of the lift lobby Stourhead House belongs to Phase III of the Lillington Gardens development, and is entirely different in style. The garden walls to the lowest maisonettes, of red brick with some timber balustrading and black-stained gates, are an important part of the composition. 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 had begun to explore ways of using 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. As the first low-rise high-density scheme, 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. 'An elegant and exciting environment for young and old' (The Times, 13 September 1972).

Listing NGR: TQ2955778427

External Links

• Historic England Listing
• Wikidata Q17550220

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

• 
  Devon (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  [(Bedfordshire, Huntingdon and Peterborough)] [By (author) Nikolaus Pevsner] published on (January, 1968)
• 
  Somerset: South and West (Pevsner Architectural Guides) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  [(Shropshire)] [By (author) Nikolaus Pevsner] published on (January, 1958)
• 
  Pioneers of Modern Design: From William Morris to Walter Gropius (Penguin Art & Architecture)
• 
  Norfolk 1: Norwich and North-East: Norwich and North-east v. 1 (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)