Nos. 80-90 South Hill Park (evens)

Nos. 80-90 South Hill Park is a terrace of six houses built between 1954 and 1956 to the designs of Stanley Amis and William and Gillian Howell, who designed them for themselves and four other families.

The houses are constructed with brick crosswalls and concrete floors. Originally, the front and back elevations were composed of glass and timber, but these have been replaced with aluminium, PVC and glass to the front, and a mixture of timber, steel, aluminium and glass to the rear. The roofs are flat.

Each house is one structural bay wide, although appearing as two bays to the front, and rises three storeys high with a basement. Because the land falls away to the west, the basement opens at garden level to the rear. At the south end of the terrace, No. 80 has an additional bay which originally housed a basement studio and ground-floor garage, but this bay now forms two self-contained flats with two additional storeys above (these additions are not part of the listed building). No. 86 is also believed to be occupied as two maisonettes. The houses have alternate mirrored plans, each with a narrow cantilevered central staircase. All houses except No. 86 have a partially double-height principal living space to the rear. The floor plans of the six houses were all subtly different to suit their original clients, but were all designed with flexibility in mind. In all houses apart from No. 80, the semi-basement level could be let as self-contained space or incorporated into the main house as additional living or playroom. In No. 80 the double-height space is between basement and ground-floor levels, rather than ground and first floor as in the other houses. The other houses originally had a garage incorporated into the floor plan adjacent to the front door. These garages have all now been converted into additional living space, maintaining a similar glazing pattern to the original glazed garage doors.

The houses have a distinct, grid-like character to their elevations. The division between each house is marked by the exposed ends of the party crosswalls, acting as piers, and the floor slab edges form continuous horizontals delineating storeys. The glazed front doors, each with a sidelight to one side, are recessed, with the former garages either to the right or left. Steps lead down to basement level. The former studio and garage to No. 80 forms an extra cross-walled bay at the end of the terrace, now extended upwards by two storeys in a style broadly matching the rest of the terrace. The original stained timber framework holding the windows and white-painted timber spandrel panels has been replaced across all six houses with a dark aluminium framework and white PVC panels. The largely accurate replication of the original glazing pattern means this alteration has had surprisingly little impact on the overall character of the terrace.

The four-storey rear elevations are also defined by their strong gridded character despite various changes. The crosswalls project, terminating vertically as brick piers, and these are spanned by balconies, most with their original timber and glass balustrades at first and third floors, and some with their original pergola at second floor over the balcony beneath. No. 86 has an additional balcony at second floor, and the first-floor balcony has been enclosed in glass and incorporated into the house. The crosswalls are terminated horizontally at roof level with a concrete beam spanning between them. Spiral stairs of cast iron or timber originally linked the first-floor balconies with the garden, but a number of these have been removed as the lower ground-floor rooms have been incorporated into the main living spaces. The frames holding the glazing in the rear elevations have been variously renewed, but they are recessed back from the party walls and all share a simple, modern aesthetic, reducing the impact of these changes.

The interiors originally had unplastered painted brick walls and timber ceilings. The central dog-leg stairs have open timber treads supported on concrete spine beams, enclosed by glazed partitions, allowing light to be transmitted through the depth of the houses. Internal doors between living spaces were also glazed. The interiors are characterised by the use of exposed and transparent materials, expressing and revealing the structure of the buildings. The original balustrades to the balcony of the first-floor living space incorporated bookshelves or fitted cupboards. Amis's former house, No. 84, had a fireplace central to this balustrade, but this was never a convenient feature as the flue rose through the centre of the bedroom above, and has since been removed.

Despite a greater level of variation to the rear, the terrace retains its uniform gridded character externally. From the outset, each of the houses was slightly different, reflecting the needs of each client, and all were built to respond flexibly as those needs changed. Despite subsequent internal and external changes, the group still represents the original architectural intention: to create light, spacious, flexible family homes. Their influence and architectural and historic interest lies in their ability to achieve this through ingenious planning on deep, narrow plots, enhanced by the simple, honest use of exposed and transparent materials, allowing for the ongoing adaptation of the buildings without loss of these fundamental qualities.