Details
798-1/0/10317 FITZROY ROAD
30-JUN-04 (Off)
Primrose Hill Studios
II
Artists' studio houses. 1877-82. Alfred Healey, builder. Stock brick with red-brick trim. Prominent slate roofs with half and whole hips. Four house types arrayed around a rectangular courtyard. Earlier west build represented by two types (Nos 1 and 6 and Nos 2-5). Later east build by two more types (Nos 7 and 8 and Nos 9-12). Further variation in The Lodge, said to have been built as servants' quarters. Varied and picturesque cottage version of Queen Anne idiom, reflecting grander artist's studio houses. Nos 2-5 are a row divided by the entrance alley. Double pile with asymmetrical M roofs. Lower front range living spaces, taller rear range galleried studios with north-west facing studio windows in back or garden elevations and roof slopes. Single-storey asymmetrical four-bay fronts, four-panel doors, small glazing-bar casement windows, some replaced. Party-wall parapets, tall red-brick chimneys. Nos 1 and 6 at ends of west group step forward to close court. Entrances in returns to slightly taller end blocks, half-hipped roofs. Leaded-light dormer window to east on No. 6; No. 1 abuts The Lodge, a two-storey house, with a canted-bay window under a pentice, eaves to half-hipped roof interrupted by eight-light window. Nos 7-12 have smaller footprints and no gardens. Single-storey top-lit studios, variegated rooflines with oversailing eaves. Nos 7 and 8 (to north) a mirrored pair with semi-basements and pyramidal roofs. Entrances together, recessed in deep porches and up flights of steps, part-glazed, margin-lit doors. Tall galleried studio rooms, single large windows with eight-light fixed panes over twin plate-glass sashes. Low-level small casement windows. To rear plain stock-brick two-storey elevation, each house having three bays of sash windows over doorways, some blocked. Nos 9-12 could not be lit from the rear and so are differently disposed and smaller; basements not evident. Single-bay studios have large windows, four-pane glazing surviving at No. 11. Half hips to each roof, large rooflights in north slopes. Linking low flat-roofed entrance bays, double part-glazed doors, small windows, dentil courses. To rear blind stock-brick gabled walls.
Interiors have not been inspected. No. 8 can be seen from courtyard to have studio gallery with balustrade of pierced splat balusters.
First tenants included the painters John Dawson Watson (No. 1), Joseph Wolf (No. 2), John William Waterhouse RA (No. 3), John Charles Dollman (No. 5), P. M. Feeney (No. 7), Charles Whymper (No. 8) and Lawrence George Calkin (No. 10). Arthur Rackham lived at No. 3 in 1905-6, when some of the illustrated books for which he is best known were published, and at No. 6 after 1920 when his main home was in Sussex. Subsequent tenants have included Lord Methuen RA, Patrick Caulfield and John Hoyland. Sir Henry Wood, musician and conductor, also lived here.
Primrose Hill Studios are listed as an early, attractive and well-preserved example of speculatively built artists'studio houses.
