31a Grove End Road, Former Studio

Summary

Studio, c1926 by Thomas Tait for the sculptor Sir William Reid Dick; from 1974 adapted as a family home by the architects Colin St John Wilson and M J Long.

Reasons for Designation

Studio, c1926 by Thomas Tait for the sculptor Sir William Reid Dick, and from 1974 adapted as a family home by the architects Colin St John Wilson and M J Long, listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:

* Architectural and design interest: a commercial inter-war studio, designed for an eminent sculptor by a prolific and respected architect, reflecting both traditional studio design and modernist trends;

* Plan, fixtures and fittings: a north-lit studio, fitted-out to a standard that exceeds the norm, the joinery of the gallery reflecting the precise geometric forms of the Scottish Arts and Crafts tradition in which both Tait and Reid Dick were trained;

* Degree of survival: the principal elements of the external form, plan, fixtures and fittings are unusually intact, the function thereby remaining legible;

* Historic interest: built at the height Reid Dick's career, a sculptor highly regarded for his fine contemporary work at Unilever House and Selfridges. Sculptural fragments from this work are built into the building. Later adapted as the home of the architects Colin St John Wilson and M J Long, coinciding with their major work, the British Library (q.v);

* Group value: adjacent to 44 Gove End Road, it continues the tradition of studios and artists workshops in St John's Wood.

History

31a Grove End Road was built as a studio by the architect Thomas Tait for the sculptor Sir William Reid Dick. It was probably built c1926, since winning the competition for the figures for the Kitchener memorial in St Paul’s Cathedral enabled Reid Dick to buy 31 Grove End Road and build the studio in the garden. He lived and worked there during his most productive years and photographs show him working in the studio on the monumental sculpture, Controlled Energy, for the Unilever building in London.

In 1974 the architects Colin St John Wilson and M J Long bought the studio from the artist Kenneth Green, restoring the building and adapting it as a family home. A new straight flight stair was added to reach existing bedrooms in the former loft above the entrance. To create a further bedroom the balcony at the western end - first used as a work space - was enclosed by a folding screen. A library and study was installed behind the main stack in what may have been originally a model’s changing room, and a store room to the side was converted to a kitchen. It was illustrated in 'The houses architects live in', by Barbara Plumb (1977).

The modernist external form and Arts and Crafts inspired joinery reflect Tait’s background and interests. Of working class background and educated at Glasgow School of Art in its early years, the architect Thomas Tait (1882-1954) worked in partnership first with Sir John Burnet and later with Francis Lorne. His considerable output of work also drew on North American advances in office design and construction and on European, particularly Corbusian, modernism, the latter expressed in the cubist houses at Silver End, Essex built for WF Crittall, the window manufacturer, in 1927-30. He collaborated again with Reid Dick, notably on Unilever House, London (1932) and St Andrew's House, Edinburgh (1939).

The sculptor Sir William Reid Dick RA (1879-1961) trained at Glasgow School of Art, moving to London c1908. He was elected to the Royal Society of British Sculptors in 1915, was awarded membership of the Royal Academy in 1928 and was knighted in 1935. Having established a reputation as a monumental sculptor, the Kitchener memorial in St Paul's Cathedral (1922-5) was among his finest achievements. Architectural works included colossal groups for Unilever House, London (1932), bas reliefs for Selfridges, London (1928) and figures for St Andrew's House, Edinburgh (1939). He lived and worked at 31 Grove End Road and its studio until 1938 when he moved to larger premises at 16 Maida Vale.

Sir Colin St John Wilson RA (1922-2007), Professor of Architecture at Cambridge University between 1975 and 1989, began his career at London County Council where he collaborated with (Sir) Leslie Martin, among many others, before becoming a lecturer in Architecture at Cambridge in 1956 where Martin was Professor. Wilson and Martin worked together on a number of projects, but Wilson is undoubtedly best known for his design of the British Library, a project of some 30 years duration for which M J Long drew up the brief. A highly influential architect of the post-war period, his renown is attested by 10 of his buildings being designated, including the Oxford University St Cross Library building (1961-5) and Harvey Court halls of residence at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge (1961-2) both listed at Grade II*.

M J Long (b 1939) studied at Smith College and then Yale University, where she met Colin St John Wilson, then a visiting tutor and after graduating she travelled to Finland to study the work of Alvar Aalto. In the early 1970s she taught at the University of Maryland, the Bartlett School of University College, London, and still teaches at Yale University. After an initial project, designing a house and studio in 1965-7 for Christopher Cornford, studio commissions included a conversion for R B Kitaj in Elm Park, Kensington in 1980-1, no less than four conversion works (and an unrealised house) for Peter Blake, and one wholly new building for the artist Gordon House in Islington (1986), leading Long to become a specialist in the genre. The restoration and conversion of Porthmeor Studios in St Ives, Cornwall, won RIBA national and regional awards in 2014. Long set up her own architectural practice as Long & Kentish in 1994, with former associate Rolfe Kentish. Their independent work includes Westlain House (1997-2002) and the Falmer Library (1998-2003) at the University of Brighton, and the National Maritime Museum at Falmouth, completed in 2003. Pallant House Gallery, Chichester, West Sussex whose extension of 2001-6 is jointly credited to Wilson and to Long & Kentish, holds Wilson’s collection of art. Long & Kentish also designed an extension to the British Library to house its Centre for Conservation in 2001-7, and most recently worked on alterations to the Keeper’s House at the Royal Academy, with David Chipperfield.

Details

Studio, c1926 by Thomas Tait for the sculptor Sir William Reid Dick; from 1974 adapted as a family home by the architects Colin St John Wilson and M J Long.

MATERIALS: rendered brick with a steel framed roof clad in pantiles. The north wall is formed by large Crittall window units fixed to a steel frame.

PLAN: polygonal on plan and double height, with angular single-storey projections either side of the entrance. It was originally laid out as a commercial sculptor’s studio which comprised a large full-height, north-lit central space entered by double doors on the front elevation with a storage loft reached by a ladder above it. At the far end of the studio is a full-width internal gallery above an internal stack and fireplace which is set back under the balcony as if to create an inglenook.

In adapting it to a house, the north-lit, full-height studio was retained as a living hall. Built-in fittings allow the gallery to be used as a work space and bedroom. Behind the stack is a small enclosed triangular space, conceivably a model’s changing room, and latterly used by St John Wilson as a study and library. A straight flight of stairs was added to give access to bedrooms in the former storage loft, while the projecting bays contain a bathroom and study. Further storage was provided to the side of the studio, in the space which had been previously adapted as a kitchen.

EXTERIOR: the entrance, which is wide to accommodate commercial traffic, has a pair of 1970s doors with vertical glazed lights. First floor windows, which were probably inserted in the 1960s, flank a cast of one of Reid Dick’s panels for Selfridges which is set into the wall above the entrance. Elsewhere, such as the narrow vertical ground floor windows on each face of the projecting bays, windows are metal-framed Crittalls. The cranked north-facing wall is almost fully-glazed with Crittall units and includes a pedestrian entrance towards the western end.

INTERIOR: the building has a cranked, braced roof. At the western end is a gallery with a soft wood frame reached by a tight winder stair, with a rope handrail. The joinery is reminiscent of the Scottish Arts and Crafts School, the precise geometry of the beam and joist ends a contrast to the turned balusters of the balustrade. Set back beneath the balcony is a brick stack and fireplace above which is a cast of one of the panels from Reid Dick's Kitchener memorial at St Paul's Cathedral. Behind the stack is a small 'cave like' triangular space, lit from high up and also with a small fireplace in painted brick. Lined with bookshelves it was fitted out as a library by St John Wilson. Installed in 1974, a screen with built-in cupboards and a bed below an internal window with folding shutters allows the gallery to be used as a bedroom. A straight flight of stairs with timber tread ends and the timber frame projected to form an open, vertical screen provides access to bedrooms above the entrance. Within the main studio is a cast iron stove, fixed to the floor.

Sources

Books and journals
Stonehouse, R, Colin St John Wilson, (2007)
Long, MJ, Artists' Studios, (2009)
Menin, Sarah, Kite, Stephen, An Architecture of Invitation: Colin St John Wilson, (2005), 165
Plumb, Barbara, The houses architects live in, (1977)

Websites
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Sir William Reid Dick, accessed 14 July 2015 from http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/32813
Dictionary of Scottish Architects Biography Report, accessed 14 July 2015 from http://www.scottisharchitects.org.uk/architect_full.php?id=200729
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography Thomas Tait, accessed 14 July 2015 from http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/40375

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