Description

TQ3282 SW 627-0/3/10166

GOLDEN LANE (east side)
Basterfield House including steps to garden

GV II
Block of 54 maisonettes. Design won in competition in 1952, built to revised designs 1954-56; competition winner Geoffry Powell; architects for built scheme Chamberlin, Powell and Bon. Ove Arup and Partners, engineers.

Pink brick crosswall construction with brick endwall (with pink mortar), concrete floor and roof slabs, concrete balconies (now painted) and coloured infill panels, some of opaque glass. Flat roof. six storeys over basement stores. The maisonettes set in pairs along three rows, eighteen per pair of floors. Balconies to south, the lowest tier of maisonettes with steps paved in quarry tiles leading down to large courtyard garden. The upper flats reached from access galleries, via staircase at east end, shared with Stanley Cohen House, and freestanding lift tower on north side of west end by escape stair set within block. Most maisonettes have two bedrooms, three-bedroom units in western two bays.

On the south elevation the crosswalls project forward to give privacy to each maisonette, and the block reads as three terraces of houses, on top of each other. Aluminium windows with timber framing to living room. The aluminium system repeated on the north elevation, and continues as the framework for the matt red cladding panels set in bands under the windows. Upper floor bedroom windows project; set-back staircase windows to each unit in lower levels; continuous bands of glazing and red panels on top floor of topmost maisonettes. Red-clad projection to end maisonettes at rear of escape stair. Concrete balconies with steel top rails, those to ground floor with glass screens between each pair of units. Brick piers to entrance side mask timber doors set in pairs. Access galleries with steel railings, wired glass balcony fronts on first, third and fifth floors serve fire escape balconies between bedrooms, those at end serve escape stairs. Glazed open well staircase at east end, with storey-high panes set in timber frames. The liftshaft with rubbish shute set in freestanding concrete sheets. Original signs survive.

Interiors with hardwood veneer floors, and glazed screens between kitchen and dining space. This combines with the double height of the stairwell to give a sense of greater spaciousness than is actually the case, for the dimensions of the units were restricted under reduced minimum standards introduced in 1951. Staircases with solid risers, continued behind as stepped bookcases in living room. Staircases on lower floors rise from within the living room, those on upper level from opposite front door. Upper level has top-floor central bathrooms with central glazing. Fitted cupboards and shelving of interest where they survive, though kitchen and bathroom fittings are not of special interest.

HISTORY AND ANALYSIS
The development and importance of the Golden Lane Estate is explained in the entry for Great Arthur House.

Listing NGR: TQ3220382152

External Links

• Historic England Listing
• Wikidata Q26272808

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

• 
  Cornwall (Pevsner Architectural Guides) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Department for Communities Listed Historic Buildings of Northern Ireland: Information Guide for the 2nd Survey of Historic Buildings
• 
  Essex: Buildings of England Series (Buildings of England) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Historic Environment Law: Planning, Listed Buildings, Monuments, Conservation Areas and Objects, Supplement 2014
• 
  Development and Design of Heritage Sensitive Sites: Strategies for Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas
• 
  Pevsner's Architectural Glossary (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Introductions)