22-32 Winscombe Street

Five houses and a studio designed in 1963 and built in 1965–6 by Neave Brown for the Pentad Housing Society, with Tony Hunt as structural engineer and Max Fordham as services engineer. No. 30 was designed for Brown himself.

The development sits at the end of a cul-de-sac on a sloping site, with a south-facing garden plot behind. The houses are constructed using concrete block crosswall construction with in-situ concrete terraces, cantilevered slabs and wall beams. The facades are finished in flint-lime brick with flat roofs throughout.

The five main houses (Nos. 24–32) form a short terrace with a paved car parking area in front. Each house is identically laid out across three storeys and connected internally by a central spiral staircase. The main entrance is positioned on the first floor, accessed from the street via a second half-turn spiral stair and a small balcony. This opens into a hallway with a cloakroom and bathroom to the left. At the rear, a large kitchen and dining area features doors onto a broad terrace, from which a third spiral staircase descends to the garden. The lower ground floor was designed as children's accommodation with its own separate street entrance and bathroom, providing independence for adolescent occupants. It contains a single bedroom at the front (planned as a perfect cube) and a large flexible space at the back, divisible into two separate rooms by a sliding wall. The upper floor holds the main living area overlooking the garden, separated by a pivot door from the master bedroom at the front.

No. 22, forming a single-storey annexe to the western end of the terrace, comprises a small courtyard (now roofed in) with a studio space behind.

The street frontage presents a complex but orderly composition. The upper floor is cantilevered, with lower storeys recessed beneath. Within each recess sits a concrete spiral staircase in a semi-circular concrete enclosure, leading up to the main door fronted by a small balcony with timber and wire-mesh balustrade. Below is the entrance to the lower ground-floor vestibule, its end wall brought forward beneath the balcony and formed of glass bricks. The cantilevered upper floor features fair-faced brick regularly punctuated by square window openings, creating regularity that contrasts with the complex forms below. All window frames, doors and associated elements are of heavy dark-stained timber. The studio is largely concealed behind a blank brick wall; its central gate was replaced with a door when the courtyard was roofed over.

The garden front offers a lighter variant of this composition. The upper floor is again cantilevered, but with sliding picture windows to the living rooms forming an almost continuous glazing band. A deep terrace runs the full width at first-floor level with timber and mesh balustrade, with mesh screens separating each property. Full-height sliding glass doors open from the dining area onto this terrace. Spiral staircases project outward to ground level rather than being recessed; these are of light steel rather than concrete. The lower ground floor features full-height glazed doors of complex quadripartite form to accommodate the divisible space behind.

Interiors have undergone varying degrees of adaptation, with No. 24 being among the least altered. The focal point is the spiral staircase, of post-tensioned timber construction in a vertical boarded surround, with treads, risers and handrails of birch ply. Original floors, now mostly renewed, were also of birch. Walls are of painted blockwork. The kitchen and dining area features a cantilevered tiled concrete work-surface with inset hobs and sink, beneath and over which are plywood-fronted cupboards and drawers (intact in No. 24, altered elsewhere). The brick-paved rear terrace extends inward to form a heated raised step within the dining area, mediating the transition between interior and exterior. The sliding partitions and wall cupboards in the lower ground-floor space survive in most houses. The upper floor features a circular skylight above the stairwell and a rotating partition between living room and master bedroom; the latter contains a built-in cupboard with a small sink (altered or removed in most houses). No. 22, the studio, has been substantially transformed by infilling of the courtyard; these new elements are not of special interest and do not form part of the listing.

The garden plot behind the site reflects Brown's ideas about shared space, with a gradual transition from private areas (paved back-yards contained by planting and projecting spiral stairs) through a semi-communal grass bank running the length of the terrace into fully communal garden area with mature trees and shrubbery. Shared facilities include a barbecue pit and play area; the garden and its associated structures do not form part of the listing.