Primrose Hill Studios

Primrose Hill Studios is a group of artists' studio houses built between 1877 and 1882 by builder Alfred Healey. The complex is constructed of stock brick with red-brick trim and features prominent slate roofs with half and whole hips.

The buildings are arranged in four house types around a rectangular courtyard. The earlier west range comprises two types: Nos 1 and 6 at the ends, and Nos 2-5 forming a row divided by an entrance alley. These western houses are double-pile structures with asymmetrical M-shaped roofs. The lower front range contains living spaces, while the taller rear range has galleried studios with north-west facing studio windows in the back or garden elevations and roof slopes. The front elevations are single-storey and asymmetrical with four bays, four-panel doors, and small glazing-bar casement windows, some of which have been replaced. Party-wall parapets and tall red-brick chimneys are characteristic features. Nos 1 and 6 step forward to close the courtyard, with entrances in their returns and slightly taller end blocks topped by half-hipped roofs. No. 1 abuts The Lodge, a two-storey house originally built as servants' quarters, which has a canted-bay window under a pentice and eaves to a half-hipped roof interrupted by an eight-light window. No. 6 features a leaded-light dormer window to the east.

The later east range, built in two further types (Nos 7-8 and Nos 9-12), has smaller footprints and no gardens. These houses have single-storey top-lit studios with variegated rooflines and oversailing eaves. Nos 7 and 8 form a mirrored pair to the north with semi-basements and pyramidal roofs. Their entrances are recessed in deep porches reached by flights of steps, with part-glazed margin-lit doors. The galleried studio rooms feature tall spaces with large windows: single large windows with eight-light fixed panes over twin plate-glass sashes, plus low-level small casement windows. To the rear, plain stock-brick two-storey elevations have three bays of sash windows over doorways on each house, some now blocked. The visible courtyard elevation of No. 8 displays a studio gallery with a balustrade of pierced splat balusters.

Nos 9-12 could not be lit from the rear and are accordingly smaller and differently disposed, with no evident basements. Their single-bay studios have large windows with four-pane glazing surviving at No. 11. Each roof has half hips with large rooflights in the north slopes. Low flat-roofed entrance bays link these houses, featuring double part-glazed doors, small windows, and dentil courses. The rear elevations are blind stock-brick gabled walls.

The design represents a varied and picturesque cottage version of the Queen Anne style, reflecting grander artists' studio houses. The buildings exemplify an early and well-preserved example of speculatively built artists' studio houses.

The complex attracted distinguished artistic tenants from its opening. Early residents included painters John Dawson Watson (No. 1), Joseph Wolf (No. 2), John William Waterhouse RA (No. 3), and John Charles Dollman (No. 5), as well as Charles Whymper and Lawrence George Calkin. Arthur Rackham, the celebrated illustrator, lived at No. 3 in 1905-6, when he was publishing many of his best-known illustrated books, and later at No. 6 after 1920, when his main residence was in Sussex. The musician and conductor Sir Henry Wood also lived here, as did subsequent notable tenants including Lord Methuen RA, Patrick Caulfield, and John Hoyland.