Highsett and Front Retaining Wall

Highsett and Front Retaining Wall

A block of 31 flats, six maisonettes and garages with a front retaining wall, designed between 1958 and 1960 by Eric Lyons for Span Developments Ltd. Z Pick was engineer, and Leslie Bilsby was the builder.

The building uses brick cross-wall construction with concrete floors, mostly clad in tile hanging, beneath a flat roof with broad cornice. It is arranged in a courtyard plan that deliberately mirrors the traditional layout of Cambridge colleges, but with openings in the east, west and north-west corner elevations where the upper floors are supported on pilotis. The views through to the rear garden, now with semi-open screens and gates, form an important part of the composition.

The building stands three storeys tall. The north elevation accommodates maisonettes set over garages, while the other elevations contain flats of various sizes. The first and second floor plans are identical, and at these levels the east and west elevations mirror each other. Windows are timber and UPVC, set in continuous bands with an irregular pattern of side casements and pivoted toplights. The deeper living room windows have transoms. Fascias are mineral board. Open stairwells incorporate some timber louvred screens, designed for drying clothes.

The front of the site features attached walls of dark brick with slit openings, now fitted with bars. An original slate nameplate survives.

Highsett was the first element built in a larger scheme and remains the only one constructed as originally intended in the 1958 brief. Eric Lyons and Geoffrey Townshend had practised together until 1954, when Townshend established himself as a developer specialising in sensitive infill sites, with Lyons as architect and Bilsby as builder. At a time when most speculative housing was of poor quality, they built a reputation for work that was humane, appropriate to its setting and beautifully planted. Equally important were the tenant management companies they pioneered—then an innovation—which ensured their schemes remained in perfect condition. They established a standard of high-quality, well-detailed housing at moderate cost, which proved highly successful and widely influential. While most of their best-known work appears in London's southern suburbs, Highsett holds special interest for its courtyard plan and careful relationship between the flats and their setting, making it one of their most asymmetrical and architecturally accomplished compositions and their finest work outside London.