Walton House

Reasons for Designation

Walton House, designed around 1906 by Percy B Tubbs, is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons: * Architectural interest: a skilful and subtle exercise in the Edwardian 'free style'. * Group value: with the Grade II-listed White House of 1936, representing a later and much more ambitious phase of speculative apartment block design.

Details

CAMDEN

798-1/0/10375 LONGFORD STREET 20-AUG-10 Walton House

II Block of flats, c1906 by Percy Burnell Tubbs.

MATERIALS: Soft red brick and buff terracotta; glazed brick basement and white rendered attic; Welsh slate roof.

PLAN: Off-centre stair hall with cellar below and two flats per floor above, each comprising one or two bedrooms, living-room, kitchen and bathroom/WC. Right-hand flats are narrower and deeper on plan, with living-room, bathroom and bedrooms ranged along a corridor running front to back; those to left are more compact, with living room and main bedroom facing south and kitchen, bathroom and second bedroom facing rear yard to north.

EXTERIOR: Free Arts-and-Crafts influenced style. Four-storeys above low half-basement. Main south façade to Longford Street dominated by stair oriel in terracotta with grid-like mullion and transom fenestration, set off-centre above main doorway which has twin part-glazed doors and moulded floral swags over lintel. Ground-floor above low half-basement has three large tripartite windows with semi-circular heads and alternating brick and terracotta voussoirs. Terracotta string course breaking forward across oriel. First and second-floors have sliding sash windows with flat rubbed-brick arches, those on the second-floor with projecting brick aprons. Terracotta modillion cornice, also breaking across oriel. Attic storey has triplets of small casement windows. Deep-eaved roof with shaped dormer above stair. Return east elevation to Little Albany Street uses same materials as main façade, with two projecting end stacks supported on relieving arches springing from pairs of small scroll-brackets. Utilitarian north elevation of brown brick, stepping down on left-hand side in with tall polygonal bay window to right. Blank west elevation abuts neighbouring building.

INTERIORS: Terrazzo-floored entrance lobby leading to cantilevered concrete stair with ornamental cast-iron balusters. Flats have part-glazed hardwood doors with brass knockers and letterboxes. Surviving internal features include moulded cornices, picture-rails and skirting-boards, four-panelled pine doors and simple timber fire surrounds.

HISTORY: Drainage plans for Walton House were lodged with St Pancras Borough Council in August 1906, by the architect Percy B Tubbs and the builders G Munday & Sons. The building work itself may have been delayed, as Walton House does not appear in the Post Office Directory until 1918. The block seems to have been built as speculative housing for lower middle-class families, the landlord being a Mr G Moore.

Percy Burnell Tubbs (1868-1933) was a London-based architect and surveyor. After serving as an assistant with various firms he commenced independent practice in 1889, with offices on Aldersgate Street in the City of London. He later went into partnership with his son Grahame and another architect as Percy Tubbs, Son and Duncan. Much of the firm's output consisted of commercial buildings in the City, most of which - with the notable exception of the Grade II listed Glasgow Herald offices on Fleet Street (1927) - do not survive. Other works included three suburban branches of Barclay's Bank, a (surviving) public housing scheme on Hortensia Road in Chelsea and a number of war memorials - one of which, at Wooton-under-Edge in Gloucestershire, is listed at Grade II. Among numerous professional affiliations, Tubbs was President of the Society of Architects from 1912 to 1914.

SOURCES: Drainage plans held by London Borough of Camden Planning Department. RIBA Directory of British Architects 1834-1914 (2001). Obituary, The Builder, 10 February 1933. Biographical file held at the RIBA library.

REASONS FOR DESIGNATION: Walton House, designed around 1906 by Percy B Tubbs, is listed at Grade II for the following principal reason: * Architectural interest: a skilful and subtle exercise in the Edwardian 'free style'. * Group value: with the Grade II-listed White House of 1936, representing a later and much more ambitious phase of speculative apartment block design.

Legacy

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

Legacy System number:

507161

Legacy System:

LBS

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