Runnymede

Coastal Road

Listed on the National Heritage List for England. Search over 400,000 listed places

Overview

Heritage Category:: Listed Building
Grade:: II
List Entry Number:: 1419211
Date first listed:: 30-Oct-2003
List Entry Name:: Runnymede
Statutory Address:: Coastal Road

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Location

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Official list entry

Heritage Category:: Listed Building
Grade:: II
List Entry Number:: 1419211
Date first listed:: 30-Oct-2003
List Entry Name:: Runnymede
Statutory Address 1:: Coastal Road

This List entry helps identify the building designated at this address for its special architectural or historic interest.

Unless the List entry states otherwise, it includes both the structure itself and any object or structure fixed to it (whether inside or outside) as well as any object or structure within the curtilage of the building.

For these purposes, to be included within the curtilage of the building, the object or structure must have formed part of the land since before 1st July 1948.

Understanding list entries

Corrections and minor amendments

This List entry helps identify the building designated at this address for its special architectural or historic interest.

For these purposes, to be included within the curtilage of the building, the object or structure must have formed part of the land since before 1st July 1948.

Understanding list entries

Corrections and minor amendments

Location

Statutory Address:: Coastal Road

The building or site itself may lie within the boundary of more than one authority.

County:: West Sussex
District:: Arun (District Authority)
Parish:: Kingston
National Grid Reference:: TQ0842301523

Details

Private House. 1936 by Wells Coates, builders E and L Berg. Steel frame, clad in steel sheeting, on concrete foundations and with plaster wall finishes. Flat roofs. Near-diamond shaped plan of two storeys and roof-top room, the upper floor set behind balconies - with curved prow and flanking single-storey wings facing south across the sea. Entrance on north side facing the road has two storey wing. Flat roofs accessed from small room or lobby which incorporates stack. International modern style. Windows replaced within original surrounds, save where concealed behind later screens to balcony. Balcony supported on narrow columns. Interior never had features of special interest.

This is a rare example of a Sunspan House, and forms a strong group with Sea Lane House, the modern movement house by Yorke and Breuer already listed.

Wells Coates was 'the father-figure of the English modern movement' (Cohn), and one of the first architects to building a pure modern style. His engineering background led him to become the first British modernism to exploit the possibilities of prefabrication, when he designed the Sunspan House as a kit to be assembled by builders. The idea of prefabrication and easy-assembly was one of the important tenets of modernism: the idea of putting an architect-designed house within as easy reach of the population as a motor car. The design developed out of the Isotype studies made as part of his design of the Lawn Road flats (grade I) in Camden, London. The critic Philip Morton Shand, writing in the Architects' Journal, considered the Sunspan House 'perhaps the first serious English contribution to domestic planning forms since that famous discovery of the "free, open planning " of the English country house took the Continent by storm at the beginning of this century.' However, very few examples were built, and this survivor remains important, despite its alteration, and additionally has strong group value with its modern neighbour.

Sources Architects' Journal, 26 April 1934 Sherban Cantacuzino, Wells Coates, A Monograph, London, Gordon Fraser, 1978.

Sources

Books and journals
Cantacuzino, S, Wells Coates a Monograph, (1978)
Cohn, L, The Door to a Secret Room; A Portrait of Wells Coates, (1997)
'Architects Journal' in Architects Journal, (1934)

Legal

This building is listed under the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990 as amended for its special architectural or historic interest.