Details
798-1/0/10299 MILLFIELD LANE
01-FEB-07 Highgate
38
House, staff flat and garage
II
Private house with staff flat and garage, 1968-9 by Philip Pank (when in partnership with Robert Howard) for Harvey Ünna, the literary agent.
The building has load-bearing hand-made grey-brown Flintshire brick walls, with a reinforced concrete slab floor for the upper storey. Windows and exterior doors are of utile. The house has lead fascias, and joinery is of purpose-made British Columbian pine throughout. The upper terrace and entrance stairs are also of brick. Flat roof, concrete chimney.
A detached two-storey house of a rectangular plan, with a rectangular staff flat and double garage adjoining, but not connecting, at the rear. The house is set at the back of the garden, and addresses the garden, the street and Hampstead Heath beyond. The land falls from back to front beneath the house, so that the first floor is stepped back above the ground floor, which is partly built into the bank. The main access is via a protruding pod, containing entrance hall and cloakroom, at the rear of the house at first floor level, with a smaller door to its right leading directly to the kitchen. This level is reached by the inclining drive running along the west edge of the site and an external stair between house and garage/flat. The living accommodation is at first floor level. The rooms interconnect and are split into a dining room and kitchen to the west, and a large living room to the east, with the internal stair between. The dining room and living room face south on to the garden and have access on to the wide terrace which runs the full length of the house. Underneath, a music room and two bedrooms are placed along the south side, with direct access to the garden. A boiler room, two bathrooms and sauna sit behind, with a large service corridor running along the rear of the house. The separate one-storey staff flat above the garage is accessed by an external stair on its west side. It has a kitchen and living room at the front, bathroom, store and bedroom at the back, with a lean-to extension on the east side. The east wall of the flat and north wall of the house enclose a small sloping garden.
The south-facing garden façade is the principal one. The upper storey is set back. It has a row of full-height vertical windows with small high level windows above, divided by the cantilevered wood-lined canopy running the length of this façade, partially covering the upper terrace. The box beams from the living room protrude through the outside wall between the high level windows, from which the canopy appears to be suspended. The brick ground floor is punctuated by four sets of full height windows opening on to a second paved terrace. The rear and side façades are blank brick walls, topped with a strip of high level windows (rear) or timber boarding (sides) and lead flashing. The rear façade is divided by the entrance pod. The east wall has a protruding brick box that holds the fireplace, with tubular chimney above. The west wall is punctuated by a few window openings, and follows the contours of the stepped back front façade. The flat/garage is similar but of simpler design. The south façade has a large timber double garage door at ground-floor level, the first floor has a narrow band of windows and a layer of timber boarding below roof level. Other facades are largely obscured by planting. Utile (hardwood) windows have been renewed in the same form as the originals.
The house interiors are of a high level in terms of materials and finish. There are maple floors throughout. The first-floor rooms have high pine-boarded ceilings resting on large ply-clad box beams. End walls are fairfaced brick, with timber from the level of the box beams upwards. All rooms have high level windows between box beams to the north and south, and the dining and living rooms have a wall of full-height windows with sliding components. The living room has fitted timber shelving on the rear wall and a fireplace recessed in the east wall, with raised stone hearth. There is a custom-built wooden fitted kitchen with dark grey tiles. The wall of cupboards on its south side functions as a division between it and the dining room, with a hatch. On the ground floor, walls are rendered, with fitted cupboards in white painted timber. Bathrooms have white fittings and white tiles.
The house was built in part of the garden of an older house, re-landscaped by John Brookes, one of the key designers of gardens for modern houses in the period.
Included as a sumptuous private house in the modern movement, powerfully composed and richly appointed. Monumentality was a distinctive feature of Pank's work, even though he never worked on a large scale; this is one of his larger houses and one where his idiom is most fully realised. His work developed from a love of natural materials and finishes, owing something to Eastern traditions, to Frank Lloyd Wright and perhaps to Auguste Perret. Philip Pank (1934-1991) died relatively young and this is one of his most important buildings.
Sources:
Architectural Review, March 1971, pp.183 - 7.
House and Garden, May 1971 pp.82-85.
House and Garden, May 1976, pp.126-9.
Ideal Home, May 1978, pp. 146-7.
Bridget Cherry and Nikolaus Pevsner, Buildings of England: London 4: North, London: Penguin, 1998, p.414.
Obituary, Architects' Journal, 24 and 31 July 1991, p.7
