Chaucer House

Details

TQ 2978 SE WESTMINSTER CHURCHILL GARDENS ROAD
(North side)
1900/109/10106
Chaucer House

GV II


Block containing 104 flats and one office. Design won in competition 1946, built 1947-50; Powell and Moya architects for Westminster City Council, 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 roofs. Large flats arranged in pairs off six projecting stairwells with lifts tucked behind. The two northernmost ranges stepped slightly to west, raised on cross walls over open ground floors, giving view through of Churchill Square, one section infilled by office. Three-bedroom flats on ground to seventh floors, set in mirrored pairs with canted 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 with concrete stairs and straight steel balusters, and 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. 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. A plaque on southern side elevation commemorates the opening of the estate on 24 July 1951 by the Duchess of Marlborough. Chaucer House was the first block to be completed at Churchill Gardens. 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 unification 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 rise the full height' praised Henry-Russell Hitchcock. Designed by architects aged only 25 and 26 respectively, 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 a density of over 200 persons per acre. Churchill Gardens have been celebrated since 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: TQ2920278023

Legacy

The contents of this record have been generated from a legacy data system.

Legacy System number:

472009

Legacy System:

LBS

Sources

Books and journals
Esher, L, A Broken Wave The Rebuilding of England 1940-1980, (1981), 105
Architects Journal in 2 October, (1952), 406-14
Architects Journal in 7 December, (1950), 481-92
Architectural Review in September, (1953), 176-184

End of official list entry

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