Bentham House

Bentham House

Bentham House is a steel-framed building clad in Portland stone, situated on a corner site and comprising five storeys with a basement, small sub-basement, and attic. The mansard roof is covered in slates. Windows at ground floor are bronze multi-light casements, with steel multi-light casements above. The interior makes extensive use of hardwood timber in joinery, panelling and flooring, alongside polished stone and terrazzo flooring and wall cladding.

The building is broadly rectangular in plan, formed of a long, five-bay range facing north onto Endsleigh Gardens, each bay with paired windows, with towers at each end housing entrance lobbies, stairs, lifts and some larger offices. The towers and the fifth floor and attic are set back slightly from the main body of the north elevation, which terminates with a parapet. Above the attic is a mansard roof with flat-headed roof dormers. The return flank of the west tower forms the west elevation onto Endsleigh Street, which is four bays wide, and then steps down to an additional parapeted four-storey two-bay range with paired windows, which straddles a vehicular access to the rear of the site. The large area to the north of the building and the window areas to the west have now been covered and paved over.

The ground floor contains offices, a meeting room and the council chamber, now the moot court. The first, second, third and fourth floors follow an almost identical arrangement of offices leading off a spinal corridor. The two-bay range over the vehicular access also contains offices. At attic level, former living accommodation is now arranged as offices.

There are two entrances to the building, both accessed via shallow flights of steps: one in the east tower, currently covered by hoarding, and the principal entrance in the west tower, which has large panelled timber doors. The ground floor is rusticated, with a fascia running above the almost full-height windows. The paired windows facing Endsleigh Gardens are divided by engaged Greek columns. The fascia continues in front of the recessed towers, forming balconettes with bronze zigzag-patterned balustrading. The balconette to the west tower cuts across the chamfered north-west corner and runs along the west return flank fronting Endsleigh Street, supported on fluted Greek columns without capitals which form a portico over the principal entrance.

The first, second and third-floor windows are arranged in close-set pairs, bays separated by simple incised panels in the stonework. Architraves are simple flat bands, and between the windows are carved fluted spandrel panels. At the head of the parapet are incised horizontal bands and a cyma-recta moulding. The treatment is the same in the two-bay range fronting Endsleigh Street.

The windows in the towers have similar treatment to the rest of the building but are not paired, and first-floor windows to the north and the central of the three first-floor windows to the west have a broader architrave with keystone. Fourth-floor windows have an accentuated sill, continuous between the west windows. Each corner of the towers is chamfered and carved to appear as a column, bearing a flaming urn at the top. Above each fourth-floor window is a carved relief by Esmond Burton depicting labouring men, including a metal worker with anvil and tools, tunnellers with a power-breaker and shovel, a man at a lathe, and three others engaged in various physical labours.

Surrounding the now infilled areas to north and west is a slate-clad dwarf wall with bronze zigzag-pattern balustrading. The building has several rainwater hoppers bearing the NUGMW crest.

The interior has a clear hierarchy of detail, with the principal entrance foyers having polished stone floors and wall cladding, whilst the stair lobbies above have terrazzo. The main stair is square in plan with quarter landings and wraps around the lift core, which is clad in painted pressed metal sheet. The stairwell wall is clad in stone at ground floor, terrazzo above and below. The secondary stair to the east is terrazzo with a simple painted metal balustrade. Elsewhere, such as in the wide ground-floor hallway, there is flush veneered hardwood panelling and timber doors with a long glazed panel, the glass held in a copper latticework. The moot court, originally the council chamber, is fully lined with flush panelling, has a woodblock floor, and retains its original built-in curved benches and desks.

Throughout the building the smaller offices are relatively little-altered in layout and character but are modest and of lesser interest. The basement, sub-basement and attic floors have been remodelled to various extents and are again of lesser interest. The building retains much original detail; however, some fittings and finishes are later, as the building's owner since 1964, UCL, has undertaken various alterations with sympathy for the original character of the building.