3-7 Mornington Place, Regent's Park, London

Summary

A terrace of five houses, each with three storeys over a basement, constructed as part of the Southampton estate in 1834.

Description

A terrace of five houses, each with three storeys plus a basement, constructed as part of the Southampton Estate in 1834.

MATERIALS: external walls of yellow stock brick laid in Flemish bond and rusticated stucco; timber box sash windows; cast iron balcony screens to the first floor.

PLAN: the terrace on the north side of Mornington Place originally consisted of 5 houses, some now subdivided, each one two bays wide and three storeys high. Each house is rectangular on plan, with historic single-storey extensions projecting into the rear gardens of numbers 4, 5 and 7. The original plan for each house appears to have been similar, with the staircase at the rear of the building adjacent to the party wall, and two rooms to each floor.

EXTERIOR: on the principal (south) elevation, the ground floor and basement level are of stucco, with banded rustication and radiating voussoirs above the arched sash windows, while the first and second floors are of yellow stock brick laid in Flemish bond. Moulded, stucco parapets conceal the valley or ‘butterfly’ roofs behind, and all the first-floor windows to the front elevation have stone balconies with cast iron, floriated railings. Brick chimney stacks straddle the party walls between each house.

The street frontage to Mornington Place forms one unified and near symmetrical composition. Numbers 3 and 4 are slightly lower than the rest of the terrace to account for the slightly sloping street, which offsets the symmetry of the front elevation. At the centre of the group, number 5 is flanked by giant pilasters which rise the full height of the first and second floors to meet with the parapet cornice, which rises here at the centre of the elevation. The ground floor has a square-headed sash window and the first-floor window has an arched head with a hood mould. Both these windows have replacement timber frames that probably match the originals. The second-floor window is square, with an architrave surround and four panes. The panelled front door has a moulded doorcase and a transom light with a row of rounded panes.

3 Mornington Place forms the end of the terrace at the junction with Albert Street. The Mornington Place elevation is symmetrical with a pair of six-over-six sash windows to the basement level, a pair of round-arched windows to the ground floor, and pairs of architraved, recessed, windows to the first and second floors. The first-floor windows, which have moulded cornices, carry down to floor level and open onto a balcony with cast iron railings that bridge the two windows. The panelled entrance door, which has a moulded doorcase, is located to the side on the Albert Street elevation, accessed by a set of steps perpendicular to the elevation. There are two cast iron pattress plates at first floor level, but otherwise the side elevation is blind and unadorned.

Numbers 4, 6 and 7 have almost identical front elevations to that of number 3, but with moulded doorcases containing panelled front doors and rectangular transom lights adjacent to a single round-arched window at ground floor level. The elevations differ from one another only at basement level: Numbers 4 and 7 have a single window each while number 6 has a pair of windows. The first and second floors are identical to that of number 3, although the brickwork to number 7 has been painted white.

The rear elevations of all five buildings in the terrace have six-over-six sash windows with segmental arches of brick. The fenestration is asymmetrical across the two bays of each house: one window to each of the three storeys with two windows at an offset level lighting the staircases. The sawtooth pattern of the valley rooves is clearly visible on the rear elevation.

INTERIOR: 4 Mornington Place has two reception rooms at ground floor level. The larger front room retains the original cast iron fireplace with a marble mantelpiece. The entrance hall continues under an original, round-headed arch to the rear of the building where the single-storey extension is located. Rising from the entrance hall to the first and second floors is a dog-leg staircase with stick balusters and turned newel posts. The first floor comprises a large, front bedroom spanning the width of the building, with a smaller bedroom to the rear. The second floor also comprises a large front room and a smaller room to the rear. There is an original built-in cupboard at the top of the staircase. The house retains the original plaster cornicing throughout, and also the original internal timber shutters and surrounding panelling to the windows. All the shutters retain their original ironmongery.

Number 5 Mornington Place has an almost identical layout to number 4. The larger front room on the ground floor is accessed via the adjacent entrance hall and has a set of double doors leading to the smaller room at the rear. The second floor has a front bedroom, with a bathroom inserted into the north-west corner probably in the C20, and a kitchen to the rear. All the reception rooms, bedrooms and the kitchen retain their chimney breasts. The first-floor reception room has a cast-iron fireplace with a timber mantelpiece. The ground-floor rear room retains original cornicing and panelled window shutters, as does the first-floor front room along with a picture rail. It is likely that similar historic features survive in other rooms too.

The other houses in the terrace are likely to have similar plan forms, although numbers 3 and 6 have been subdivided into multiple dwellings, which will have resulted in some changes to the interiors, but some original fixtures and fittings survive. Number 6b retains the original internal window shutters and ironmongery in the first-floor front room and the dog-leg staircase with stick balusters and turned newel posts. Number 7 has not been subdivided and likely retains its original plan form.

All the houses in the terrace are reported to have two coal vaults each at basement level. Some of the original metal coal hole covers survive in the York stone pavement in front of the terrace, but these are not included in the listing.

History

At the end of the C18, as the expansion of London reached Camden Town, local landowners Charles Pratt, Earl Camden, and Charles Fitzroy, Baron Southampton began to sell leases for speculative housing development. The Camden estate to the east of Camden High Street was developed first, while many building plots in the Southampton estate to the west remained undeveloped until the 1830s when the arrival of the railways increased speculative development in the area.

Mornington Crescent was one of the first streets to be developed on the Southampton Estate between 1821 and 1832. The Greenwood Map of 1828 shows the completed Mornington Crescent with a gap in the centre of the crescent for the planned street that would later become Mornington Place. A map from the Topographical Survey of the Borough of St Marylebone dated June 1834 shows Crescent Place (renamed Mornington Place in the mid-1880s) extending westwards from Mornington Crescent, with Albert Street extending northwards but no buildings yet illustrated. A second map from the same survey, also dated 1834, shows the terrace along the north side of Crescent Place, suggesting a construction date of 1834. Along with Arlington Street and Stanhope Place, which also radiate out from Mornington Crescent, Crescent Place was one of the early phases of development to the west of Mornington Crescent, with the rest of the Southampton Estate developed slightly later following the opening of the London and Birmingham Railway in 1837. The surviving houses at numbers 3 to 7 Mornington Place are significant as the earliest remaining group of houses from that original residential expansion west of Mornington Crescent. The former Victoria Public House, which abuts the west end of the terrace, was constructed later in the mid-C19 and was converted to residential accommodation around 2013. Other original terraces on Mornington Place were demolished from the 1890s onwards.

Like Mornington Crescent, the street was named after Richard Wellesley (1760-1842), second Earl of Mornington, Governor-general of Bengal and eldest brother of the Duke of Wellington. In the C19 the street seems to have been popular among actors and others associated with the theatre for its proximity to the West End theatre district. William Harries Tilbury (1806-1864), an actor and comedian who appeared at the Covent Garden, Drury Lane, Haymarket and Adelphi Theatres, was living at 7 Mornington Place at the time of the 1851 census. The houses were popular with artists and writers too. Landscape painter John James Bannatyne (1836-1911) was living at 7 Mornington Place at the time of the 1871 and 1881 censuses, and the writer H G Wells also briefly lived at number 7 in January to March 1894 with Amy Catherine Robbins, having left his wife for her. In the C20, Mornington Place was the subject of two paintings by Frank Auerbach, an artist celebrated for his landscapes of North London as well as his portrait paintings. His painting Mornington Place, 1994 features a view of the terraced houses at 3-7 Mornington Place.

The 1876 OS map indicates that all five houses had single-storey ground-floor extensions one bay wide projecting into the rear gardens. Of these, the extensions for numbers 4, 5 and 7 survive but those of numbers 3 and 6 appear to have been demolished at some point after 1971, as they are still shown on the 1:2,500 OS map published that year. The extensions may originally have been small sculleries or attached stores or privies, unless they were a later addition to the 1834 building, in which case, they may have been flushing water closets. An outbuilding in the rear garden of number 3 may originally have been a workshop or studio for the resident of number 3. It reportedly had a chimney, since removed, and has been converted into a garage accessed via Albert Street. Numbers 3, 5 and 6 have been subdivided into multiple dwellings, probably in the late C20. The lighter colour of the bricks to the upper part of the blind, east elevation of number 3 facing onto Albert Street suggests this part of the wall was rebuilt relatively recently.

Reasons for Listing

3-7 Mornington Place, constructed in 1834, are listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:

Architectural interest:

* for the quality and composition of the façade, which is a good example of the principles of grand, palatial terraces applied to a small-scale set-piece;
* for the survival of the distinctive butterfly roof structure;
* for the good level of survival of the plan form and internal fixtures and fittings.

Group value:

* with other listed C19 terraced houses in the Camden Town Conservation Area, particularly Numbers 2-35 Mornington Crescent (National Heritage List for England entries: 1113138, 1113139, 1113140; Grade II).

External Links

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