Description

1900/0/10334 MAIDA VALE
08-OCT-03 Maida Vale
20-28
Cropthorne Court

II
Cropthorne Court. Block of flats. 1928-30. Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, architect. Monumental range faced in brown-pink brick, ground floor with buff-coloured faience.
PLAN: saw-tooth plan with three entrances, each flanked by bastion-like projections. Lifts and stairs behind entrances serving two flats per floor. Towers to rear containing projecting bedrooms.
EXTERIOR: seven storeys in all. Three entrances, each with low rectangular recessed openings leading to paired doors and with concierge windows to right. Decorative Moderne motif to window lintels of north-west ground floor continuation (formerly a bank). Upper floors arranged around the strongly rhythmic series of projecting angles, flanking tall arched recesses over the entrances, with low screens on square columns above openings. Low first floors with faience banding at top of window level, beneath a band of end-set brickwork. Metal casement windows, those to fifth floor arched resembling thermal openings. Sixth, attic storey with a band of faience at eaves level beneath the shallow projecting hipped roof.
To rear, six projecting towers with smaller windows. Tradesman's entrances and garages to rear. Neoclassical gate piers at either end of the block.
INTERIOR: not inspected. Two flats per floor, each with standard plans comprising interconnecting living and dining rooms, three bedrooms, bathroom, kitchen, and maid's room.
HISTORY: of considerable interest as a transitional block of flats, mixing classical forms with a novel and unusual plan form, which sought to let in as much light as possible into these south-west facing rooms. The strongly modelled block is 400 ft long but only 70 ft deep. Stylistically the building shows the shift away from a reliance upon scaled-up historicist sources towards a self-consciously modern approach. The architect was one of the leading practitioners of his day, and his characteristically monumental employment of brick is seen to good effect here, as is his singular adaptation of the Roman classical idiom. The flats were originally let out at rates ranging from £375-425 p.a..

SOURCES: Architect & Building News, 3 October 1930, 463-66; Architects' Journal, 17 December 1930, 896-901; The Builder, 19 September 1930, 469-70.

External Links

• Historic England Listing
• Wikidata Q26670016

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

• 
  Historic Environment Law: Planning, Listed Buildings, Monuments, Conservation Areas and Objects by Harwood, Richard (2012) Paperback
• 
  Surrey (The Buildings of England) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Listed Buildings and Other Heritage Assets
• 
  Pevsner's Architectural Glossary (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Introductions)
• 
  Pioneers of Modern Design: From William Morris to Walter Gropius (Penguin Art & Architecture)
• 
  Cambridgeshire (Pevsner Architectural Guides) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)