Description

ISLINGTON

TQ3384NW BALL'S POND ROAD
635-1/49/55 (North side)
29/09/72 Metropolitan Benefit Societies'
Almshouses and attached railings
(Formerly Listed as:
BALL'S POND ROAD
Nos.1-12
Metropolitan Benefit Societies
Almhouses East Villa, West Villa &
Chapel)
(Formerly Listed as:
BALL'S POND ROAD
Gateway and railings of Almhouses)

II

Almshouses, originally known as the Metropolitan Benefit
Societies' Asylum. 1836 (chapel and north wing), c.1865 (west
wing), 1866 (east wing), and 1931 (rebuilding of chapel). By
S.H.Ridley. Grey brick set in Flemish bond with stone
dressings, roofs of slate. The accommodation in separate wings
on three sides of a courtyard open to the street with the
former chapel, now a hall, on the axis of the north wing; in a
Tudor style. There are two houses on either side of the chapel
and four in each of the side wings, plus East and West Villa
at the end of their respective wings, which are separately
handled. The houses are typically two storeys high and
double-fronted. Each has a porch, entered through a
Tudor-arched double-chamfered doorway with hoodmould;
flat-arched, double-chamfered two-light mullioned windows with
casements to either side. Two windows to first floor, of the
same design but with hoodmoulds having stops of carved heads
or floral ornament, the hoodmoulds linked by a moulded
cornice; parapet with modern coping. Party walls rise above a
single gabled roof and carry multiple stacks at the ridge.
Modern flat-roofed extensions at the rear of each house. West
Villa and East Villa differ in that they have four bays to the
courtyard and a two-span roof with twin gabled fronts to
Ball's Pond Road, each with a two-storey canted bay below it;
the bay has four flat-arched lights to the ground floor with
cavetto mullions and four Tudor-arched lights to the first
floor, and pinnacles to the gables with corbels and crockets.
(The plans of West Villa and East Villa have been altered so
that they no longer occupy four bays to the courtyard.)
The former chapel projects forward from the north wing,
presenting a single gabled front. Central Tudor-arched
entrance, elaborately chamfered and moulded, flanked by two
small single-light windows, with a five-light oriel window
above which has moulded corbelling, two ranges of Tudor-arched
lights, a cornice with grotesque heads which continues round
the rest of the chapel, and a band of lozenge-patterned
openwork below its roof. The gable is truncated and carries a
half-domed niche. Octagonal corner-buttresses ending in
pinnacles. Side elevations have a two-light mullioned window
each to the ground floor, and a cross window to the first
floor.
Dwarf, coped and stuccoed walls, square brick coped gate
piers, recently rebuilt, and cast-iron railing with
Tudor-Gothic finials to street.
(Historians' file, English Heritage London Division).

Listing NGR: TQ3316384869

External Links

• Historic England Listing
• Wikidata Q26570245

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

• 
  Sussex: West (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Listed Buildings: The Law and Practice of History Buildings, Ancient Monuments and Conservation Areas
• 
  Yorkshire West Riding: Leeds, Bradford and the North (Pevsner Architectural Guides / Buildings of England)
• 
  Nottinghamshire (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Cambridgeshire (Pevsner Architectural Guides) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Pevsner's Architectural Glossary (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Introductions)