The Spinney Including Car Port and Log Store, Ipswich, Suffolk

Description

The entry for-

642/0/10116 WESTERFIELD ROAD
02-DEC-09 108
The Spinney including car port and log store

Shall be replaced by-

507640 108 WESTERFIELD ROAD
The Spinney including car port and log store

A two-storey detached house, built in 1960, by architect Birkin Haward for himself and his family, engineering by F.J Samuely and Partners, built by George Kenney and Sons.

MATERIALS
The ground floor is composed of a grid of untreated reinforced concrete columns, infilled with glazing and fair-faced Fletton brick panels, with the bricks in an unusual grid pattern of headers on their sides arranged in a grid. The first floor has a pine and cedar frame, clad externally with cedar boarding and with large areas of glazing. The roof is covered in felt. The house has a brick chimney, with a wooden boarded water tank attached. The materials are deliberately simple and are largely left in their natural state.

PLAN
The house is planned around a central double-height hall, lending it a feeling of spaciousness, and offering an individual interpretation of new ideas about domestic planning. It is entered from the north, via a glazed entrance hall. There is a similar arrangement at the south end which gives access through glazed doors on to the rear garden. Subsidiary rooms flank the hall to the east and west, with access to a covered terrace on the south-west corner. An open wooden staircase rises through the well to the gallery above. The first floor over-sails the ground floor, and houses the main living spaces. The studio and living room form the north and south sides of the central open gallery surrounding the hall, both with full-height windows overlooking the garden. The kitchen, dining room and bedrooms lead off the east and west sides of the gallery.

EXTERIOR
The principal north and south facades have a recessed lower storey, the upper storey supported on concrete pilotis. These facades express the distinctive undulating roofline, reminiscent of the early post-war `contemporary' style. They are predominantly glazed, with some louvred sections and insulated panels. The entrance on the north facade is flanked by plain glazing. East and west facades are simpler with straight rooflines, the upper storey only slightly overhanging and punctuated by full-height windows. Two squares of the grid form a recessed terrace on the west side, (now partially enclosed).

INTERIOR
Inside the house, timber predominates and the timber and concrete structure is revealed. First floor external walls are lined with plaster-board, and internal partitions are clad in pine cladding. A brick fireplace wall separates the dining room and living room. At ground floor, internal surfaces comprise brick panels and glazed screens. The undulating roofline is internally expressed, lined with wooden boarding in principal spaces, and plasterboard elsewhere. The hall is spanned by a central timber beam and horizontal boarding, and has a long curved perspex rooflight. The original suspended light fittings remain in the hall, supplemented by later light fittings and a stove has also been added here. The ground floor has a tiled concrete floor; the first floor is softwood.

SUBSIDIARY FEATURES
The house is set back from the road, partially screened by trees, and is reached via a covered walkway. There is also a single-storey outbuilding range to the north-east corner, comprising a car port and log store.

HISTORY
The house was built in 1960 to the designs of the architect Birkin Haward for himself and his four children. Birkin Haward (1912-2002) is recognised as an important architect and antiquarian, who in the 1930s was at the forefront of the Modern Movement in Britain as chief assistant to Erich Mendelsohn. After the firm of Mendelsohn and Chermayeff dissolved in the late 1930s, Haward carried on working in London, and after war service he was offered a partnership in his native Ipswich. This was with the firm of Johns, Slater and Haward, who in the immediate post-war years came to specialise in building schools in the expanding Ipswich suburbs. Schools were to form the backbone of Haward's career in Ipswich and beyond, but he also designed a number of office buildings, and his Castle Hill Congregational Church, Ipswich, was listed in 1998. The Spinney is his principal domestic work, for himself and his family, the design of which was started in 1957 when Haward obtained the overgrown wooded site, left vacant because of poor drainage. Building started in January 1960 and was ready for occupation in the August of the same year. Haward lived in the house until his death in 2002; after it was constructed, he added glazed screens at the north and south ends of the hall to create small lobbies. In 1984, part of the covered terrace in the south-west corner was enclosed to create an additional room. In his 1996 'Architectural Career and Autobiography' Haward said that the Spinney was `the only individual dwelling....that I felt able to conceive in an entirely uninhibited manner.'

SOURCES
Haward, Birkin 'Architectural Career and Autobiography' 1996 p.73
Architectural Design, November 1960, pp 436-8.
Bauen and Wohnen, June 1961, pp.193-6.
House and Garden,'The House and Garden Book of Modern Houses and Conversions' London, 1966 pp. 116-119.

REASONS FOR DESIGNATION DECISION

The Spinney, designed by Birkin Haward in 1960, is designated at Grade II for the following principal reasons:

* ARCHITECTURAL INTEREST: As an example of an architect's house for himself and his family it is a building of high architectural quality for its date (1960). It demonstrates an uninhibited approach to architectural expression in its imaginative and accomplished use of materials, its intelligent approach to planning and innovative layout.

* DESIGNER: The design of the Spinney is seminal in the development of Haward's ideas and practice in his later work, particularly in the planning of his school buildings. The Spinney is the only domestic work of noted architect, Birkin Haward, who is of national importance for his work at the forefront of the Modern Movement in the 1930s with Erich Mendelsohn and later for his work on schools in the East of England.

* INTACTNESS: The exterior and interior of The Spinney remains substantially intact, displaying the architect's attention to detail and finish.

Reasons for Listing

The Spinney, designed by Birkin Haward in 1960, is designated at Grade II for the following principal reasons:

* INTACTNESS: The exterior and interior of The Spinney remains substantially intact, displaying the architect's attention to detail and finish.

External Links

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