Description

TQ 3472 LEWISHAM LAMMAS GREEN
(East side)
779/29/10072
Nos.24-29 (Consecutive)

GV II

Terrace of six houses. 1955-7 by Donald McMorran of Farquharson and McMorran, with Peter Nuttall as assistant, for the Corporation of the City of London. Brick construction, colourwashed, with pantiled roofs and brick stacks. The houses each of two storeys and each have three bedrooms. Built to a similar plan, Nos. 24, 25 and 26 are mirrored by Nos. 27, 28 and 29, with round-arched entries between Nos. 25 and 26 and Nos. 27 and 28. Metal windows with side-opening casements and toplights, those to Nos. 26 and 27 renewed but retaining the pattern of the originals. Timber doors set within timber porches with pointed hoods.
INTERIORS: Living rooms with picture rails. Staircases with timber balustrades. Many fitted cupboards, particularly to the upper floors. Kitchen and bathroom fittings not of special interest. Donald McMorran is slowly becoming recognised as one of the most significant architects to work in a traditional style in the 1950s. What makes him stand out from other traditionalists was his willingness to tackle progressive building types like public housing and schools while sticking to the old values of composition, proportion and texture. This puts him closer to Giles Scott than to architects like Raymond Erith, who worked mostly in private housing. He also owed much to Vincent Harris, for whom he worked between 1927 and 1935. This is the smallest but finest of four housing schemes by McMorran, two of them for the City Corporation. The composition of three terraces set round a village green, with views of the North Downs, is made the more idyllic by the position of the two blocks of flats as a buffer to the road behind. The density is 57 dwellings per acre, less than the permissible seventy 'so as to establish conditions under which a community with its own continuity and life might be able to flourish'. The contrast of the flats with the colourwashed cottages is particularly distinguished. The form of the colourwashed terraces set in pairs owes something to the work of Tayler and Green, translated to an urban setting.

Listing NGR: TQ3466372408

External Links

• Historic England Listing
• Wikidata Q27082158

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

• 
  Yorkshire West Riding: Leeds, Bradford and the North (Pevsner Architectural Guides / Buildings of England)
• 
  ENGLAND GUIDE TO POST WAR LISTED: A Guide to Post-war Listed Buildings
• 
  Berkshire (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Suffolk: East (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Norfolk 1: Norwich and North-East: Norwich and North-east v. 1 (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Bedfordshire, Huntingdonshire, and Peterborough (Pevsner Architectural Guides) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)