27, Leighton Road

Terraced house, circa 1828, Kentish Town, with alterations of 1870 and later.

A two-storey brick house stuccoed to the front, with a valley roof concealed behind a raised parapet with moulded cornice. The two-bay house has its eastern bay set back, featuring the original six-panel timber door in a moulded surround studded with small rosettes. The fanlight has elongated oval glazing bars and the door's architrave has console brackets, as does that to the ground-floor sash window. The upper storey windows have plainer moulded surrounds. The timber sash windows are modern replacements closely matching the originals; two original windows survive to the rear, serving the first floor back room and a horizontal sliding sash overlooking the yard in the kitchen. The house was extended to the rear in 1870, then again in the 20th century. The 1870 first floor extension is supported on cast-iron columns where it jetties slightly over the ground floor, creating a covered passageway leading from a new door added in 1870 that gives direct access from the hall to the garden. The 20th-century extensions to the rear are single storey, leading off the sitting room with French windows and to the kitchen. The railings to the front garden are original, as are the garden walls to the north and west.

The interior retains much of the original room arrangement. The hall contains a wide open-well stair with plain stick balusters and moulded handrail. The area underneath has been panelled to create an alcove, probably in the 19th century. Beneath later plaster and paint is a chimney flue but no fireplace. The reception rooms off the hall have cornices, possibly original, but the original fireplaces have been removed. The front room window retains its framing joinery and may contain an original shutter beneath the window. The kitchen to the rear has a mantelshelf and flue where the range once stood, dating to the 1870s, and an original horizontal sliding shutter with heart-shaped perforations. The first floor retains one original fireplace with paterae and fluting in the back room, and an Edwardian fireplace in the front room which also has an original built-in cupboard in an alcove. The landing has been partitioned off to create an additional bedroom, probably in the 19th century, with simple timber partitioning surviving. The 1870 extension to the rear has been partially subdivided with timber partitioning and doors dating to the 1920s but retains its cornice, ceiling, shutters and a grand marble fireplace. There are two narrow service cupboards with original joinery where the 1870 extension joins the original house, and a number of original doors throughout the house.

Leighton Road was developed in the early 19th century, initially known as Evans Place, then Gloucester Place from circa 1816, before assuming its current name in the 1860s. In 1804 it was a pathway leading from Kentish Town to Islington, with a stile at the eastern end and a bowling green on its north side near where this house now stands, probably serving patrons of the Assembly House inn at the corner of Kentish Town Road. The land was then owned by Joshua Prole Torriano. From the 1820s small freehold plots were sold off for development, each sufficient for one or two houses. No. 27 was built circa 1828 and was originally in the middle of a terrace with two houses abutting it to the west; these were demolished in the 20th century. The house appears on an 1834 map and subsequent Ordnance Survey maps.

The original freeholder and builder was a Mr Crowe. An architect with family and servants subsequently occupied it. By 1861 the owner was Mr Pike with his family but no servants. Pike made various changes to the house in 1870, and his story is documented in Gillian Tindall's book "The Fields Beneath: the History of One London Village", published in 1977.