Description

TQ 2977 NW WESTMINSTER CHURCHILL GARDENS ROAD
(South side)
1900/113/10108
Keats House

GV II

Block of 97 flats. Design won in competition 1946, built 1947-51; Powell and Moya architects for Westminster City Council, under Parker Morris town clerk. Monolithic reinforced concrete frame clad in buff bricks over blue brick plinth, though floor slabs exposed and painted. Nine storeys and basement. Flat roof. In plan the block is slightly 'L'-shaped, with short projection the length of a single flat facing the Thames. Large flats arranged in mirrored pairs off five staircases with lifts tucked behind, save for the river-facing flats reached by short access galleries. Three-bedroom flats on ground to seventh floors with paired flat-fronted balconies. One- and two-bedroom flats on eighth floor set back behind access gallery and long private terrace. Wired glass to fronts of balconies and landings, the rendered walls to the rear of these originally brightly painted. The projecting stairwells and concrete stairs and straight steel balusters, revealed behind full-height metal glazing to sides. All windows to flats renewed in UPVC in 1990, replicating the original pattern save for extra central transom. The alteration has not affected the character of the blocks. Original pattern doors with upper half glazed. On roof, projecting lift machinery and water tanks set within circular roof-top drums that are a distinctive feature of the estate. Interiors not of special interest. Original name signs. Churchill Gardens was the most ambitious housing scheme of the 1940s, and the first built following an international competition. Phase IA, comprising Chaucer, Coleridge, Keats and Shelley Houses with Britain's first district heating system, won a Festival of Britain Award in 1951, and the whole estate won two Civic Trust Awards in 1962. 'The tall early blocks ... are a striking example of the simplification of tall building design by minimizing the expression of the horizontal layers of the section and accenting the continuity of such features as stair and lift towers which use the full height', wrote the American critic Henry-Russell Hitchcock in praise of the estate in 1953. Designed by architects aged only 24 and 25, the generous flats and carefully laid-out grounds and services set new standards of public housing as a model for the post-war era at the maximum permitted density of 200 persons per acre. Churchill Gardens have been celebrated since the first block, Chaucer House, opened: in 1952 the Architects' Journal considered that it was 'deservedly becoming the most highly praised example of high density development in the country'; while in 1981 Lord Esher called it 'the most successful high-density project in London'.

Listing NGR: TQ2932477936

External Links

• Historic England Listing
• Wikidata Q27083489

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

• 
  Derbyshire (Pevsner Architectural Guides) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990
• 
  Pevsner's Architectural Glossary (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Introductions)
• 
  Surrey (The Buildings of England) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Bristol (Pevsner Architectural Guides: City Guides)
• 
  Nottinghamshire (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)