Details
NE26NW
1833/8/10205
11-JUL-01
GRAHAM PARK ROAD
39-73
Flats with projecting walls, steps and garages
II
Block of 18 council flats, some now privately owned. Designed 1948-9, built 1951-2 by Clifford Wyld, District Surveyor, for Gosforth Urban District Council. Buff brick with concrete dressings; pantiled roofs. 15 flats face Graham Park Road, three face the Great North Road, the 'L'-shape thus given the block protecting the rear gardens from traffic noise. Flats are in three groups of six, set in pairs off three staircases. Three storeys, with semi-basement to wing fronting Great North Road.
Elevation to Great North Road has three windows per floor on principal levels. All windows of steel with opening casements on projecting hinges. Ground floor has five small lights and two groups of three lights to storage rooms and boiler house. Upper floors have projecting concrete frames to square windows with inset metal frames, and side casements. At right, small larder window on each floor. Ridge chimney and right boiler house stack. Right return to Graham Park Road has at left, the projecting gable for front range with window to left of stack and balconies to right of it. Long range, projecting gable of front range with window to left of stack and balconies to right of it. Long range, to right of gable, has three storeys. Flats are in three groups of seven bays, each with double glazed doors at left recessed under a canopy on sloping metal poles. Above the entrance are two stair windows. Two flats on each floor, with tiers of balconies flanking four windows, the central pair larger. Windows are in projecting concrete frames, balconies have patterned steel balustrades. On the balconies doors at each end give access to the kitchen and to the staircase. There is a rubbish chute on each balcony except the ground floor, where there is a rubbish bin at the base of the chute in a cupboard.
On the rear elevation, overlooking The Poplars, similar balconies are reached from the sitting room and the main bedroom. On the left return of the front range there is a colonnaded shelter, designed as a sheltered play area for small children, from which there is access to the storage cupboards for each flat and to the boiler room. Heating is by a district system on a loop, and original radiators survive.
Interiors. Fine open-well staircases, with steel balustrades and tiled floors and dados. Each flat has a recessed glass brick beside the door and a letter box set in the wall beneath it. A long corridor has toilet, bathroom and kitchen on one side, and bedrooms on the other; at the end of the corridor the dining room is next to the kitchen and the sitting room next to the main bedroom. In the kitchen a hatch to the dining room, and in some flats, original storage shelves and cupboards, and tiled shelf over an alcove fitted with a gas pipe perhaps for oven or for refrigerator. A glazed screen between dining and sitting rooms gives good light to each. Skirting boards are curved to give wide flat edge to fitted carpets for ease of cleaning. The standard of planning and of finish throughout is very high.
Low walls enclosing the site have chamfered stone coping, steel or wrought-iron gates are the same height as the walls. A row of fourteen garages facing The Poplars is integral to the scheme, with some renewed doors.
Sources
Tyne and Wear Archives Service: Gosforth Urban District Council records:
TWAS UD/GO/1/1-33 and /23 Council Meetings April 1948-July 1955
TWAS UD/GO/5/11, /12 and /13 Building and Town Planning Committees 1948-52
TWAS UD/GO/10 Finance Committee
Listing NGR: NZ2438967452
