No 24 Royal Hill

Details

786/0/10168 ROYAL HILL 24

II House, with later ground floor shop. Early-C18 with C19 and C20 alterations. Brick walls laid to Flemish Bond with tiled gambrel roof. PLAN: Central chimneystack type, narrow, urban plan-form (one room wide and two rooms deep), with C19 wash-house addition to rear. Bears direct resemblance to the published 1704 Moxon plan, of which this is the smallest known example. EXTERIOR: Ground floor has C20 shop front below pair of tall windows with segmental heads and sashes in shallow reveals; the lower 4-pane sashes of which may be original. Central dormer to gambrel roof. Chimney rises to rear of roof ridge. Rear rebuilt in brick in C19 with central sash to both floors and single storey C19 extension. INTERIOR: Ground floor front room re-fitted for shop use in C20, but with thin stud-and-brace partition that separated No.24 from its pair exposed in 2004 and with brick massing of chimneystack with partial cupboards to left and single-newel timber winder stair to right. Passage at far right to smaller rear room with C19 cast-iron fireplace and architrave to former cupboard. Timber winder stair to first floor where plain panelled partition including 4-panel door to front room. This room also has exposed partition to former pair, cupboard with doors removed, chimney stack with cast-iron grate and plain panelled partition with stair. Cornice removed from this room since described in 1997. 4-panel door to smaller rear room has cupbard with 2-panel door, mid-C20 fireplace, and exposed stud partition. Winder stair continues to heated garret with original roof structure (formerly plastered) with some later reinforcements. HISTORY: 24 Royal Hill was built in the early-C18 at what were then the outer edges of the rapidly expanding maritime community of Greenwich. Its original site was therefore quite rural, but this building has a distinctly urban form, being narrow-fronted and two rooms deep. It was built as part of a pair, divided only by a timber stud partition, although the house to the south has been re-built. May have always had a shop at ground floor, certainly from the C19. Original cellar has been infilled. ASSESSMENT OF IMPORTANCE: 24 Royal Hill has special interest as an early-C18 small urban house of central chimneystack plan. This arrangement was popular in late-C17 London and continued to be built into the early-C18 in lower status houses; the small artisan's house at 24 Royal Hill was carrying on this tradition. It is also of note for being remarkable similar to the 1703 published plan by Joseph Moxon (publisher and Royal Hydrographer), and this is actually the smallest known example. 24 Royal Hill retains this original plan form, full height winder staircase, central brick chimneystack, some panelling, and the intact original roof. Housing of this scale, status and date does not survive in great numbers, and often its very modesty, and the disguising effects of later alterations, have precluded these sorts of houses from being listed, despite their early date. This is an example that has value beyond being instructive, and as the the Royal Commission report describes it as an 'exceptionally rare witness to what much of the townscape of the metropolis may have comprised'

SOURCES: Peter Guillery, The Small House in Eighteenth-Century London. English Heritage, 2004. 'No.24 Royal Hill, Greenwich, London SE10' NBR Index No:96625. 1998.

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