49, Lanchester Road

Detached house at 49 Lanchester Road, Highgate, built 1925-6. Designed by architect Ewan Macpherson of Maple & Co for Thomas Adie, a shareholder and director of the famous furnishing store Maple & Co Ltd in Tottenham Court Road. The builder was Messrs Tibbenham of Ipswich, listed in Kelly's Directory as furniture manufacturers, builders' decorators and joiners. The house was originally named Symbister, after a village in Shetland, reflecting Adie's family origins in the Shetland Isles where they were textile manufacturers.

CONSTRUCTION AND EXTERIOR

The house is constructed of red brick laid in English bond with rendered upper floor, oak joinery and clay tile roof. It is a two-storey building with setback one-storey side wings. The main house comprises four bays. The entrance features a pilastered door case with a semi-circular iron fanlight, above which are console brackets supporting a first-floor oriel window. The door itself is ribbed and studded oak with a small iron grille and knocker. The upper floor has moulded rendered panels and wall plate, with four distinctive oriel windows featuring arched central lights. This oriel window motif derives from the Domestic Revival style introduced by Norman Shaw in the 1870s, itself derived from Sparrowe's House in Ipswich. The roof is steeply hipped with two hipped dormers, deep sprocketed eaves and tall stacks. The side wings are set back with scrolled upswept parapets. All elevations have oak mullion-and-transom windows with leaded lights. The rear elevation is also of four bays, with doors incorporated into the windows of the two western bays; the easternmost bay has a modern conservatory extension.

PLAN

The ground floor originally comprised a central entrance hall with a well stair, a WC to the left, lounge to the west, dining room to the rear, and kitchen to the east with a separate rear scullery accessed by a passage. The wall between kitchen and scullery has been removed and the scullery extended to form a conservatory with part of the rear wall demolished, creating one long room. Otherwise the ground-floor plan remains as originally built. The west side wing contained a billiard room; the east wing contained a garage (now a kitchen) entered from the side with service rooms to the rear linked to the scullery. The first floor contained five bedrooms, two bathrooms and a WC leading off the central stair landing. The attic contained two bedrooms and a photographic darkroom. Some upper-floor rooms have been altered by resiting of partitions.

INTERIOR

The stair hall and ground-floor principal rooms are fitted with lavish, traditionally pegged oak joinery designed by Maple & Co. The entrance hall has half-height square panelling continuing down the rear passage, an arched niche in the south-west angle, and chamfered ceiling beams with moulded stops. The oak stair has a closed string, turned balusters and heavy finials. The inner face of the entrance door is planked with elaborate iron hinges in the form of ferns.

The lounge has a stone chimneypiece with a Tudor arch, carved spandrels and carved timber lintel. The overmantel features moulded plaster panels inset with coloured and gilded relief decoration with heraldic motifs. A plaster frieze decorated with heraldic beasts runs around the room. A door on the west wall has an architrave with rope moulding.

The former billiard room has a beamed ceiling with heavy moulded axial beams which appear to be reclaimed and of considerable age. It contains a stone chimneypiece with a hollow-chamfered Tudor arch and panelled overmantel, flanked by planked cupboards with scrolled hingework. A rear door leading to the garden has fern-pattern hinges.

The rear dining room has half-height panelling in limed oak and a stone chimneypiece with a Tudor arch and carved spandrels. The walls are decorated in a naive manner to mimic 17th-century pargetting, comprising fleurs-de-lys and animals between wavy fluted pilasters and an elaborate floral panel above the chimneypiece.

The passageway contains a built-in cupboard beneath the stair with an unusual iron key-rack in the form of a large key. There are iron light fittings and beaten copper light-switch plates throughout. The former kitchen and scullery have been entirely modernised and lack special interest; the former garage is now a living space linked to the main house. The bedrooms are more simply finished with plaster cornices. The south-east bedroom has built-in oak furniture. An attic room has a fluted 1930s electric fire surround. Most ground and first-floor rooms have eight-panel doors with iron scrolled handles.

SETTING AND SUBSIDIARY FEATURES

The house is approached by stone steps enclosed by stone walls. It is surrounded by brick walls with wrought-iron gates and stone gatepiers.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

Lanchester Road first appeared on the 1913 Ordnance Survey map without any houses and remained undeveloped until 1920. Plans were approved by the Borough of Hornsey for this detached house, submitted by Thomas Mountford Adie of 38 Collingwood Avenue, Muswell Hill. Adie came from a family of textile manufacturers in Voe, Shetland Isles and served as shareholder and director of Maple & Co Ltd from 1923 to 1955. The house first appears in Kelly's Directory in 1927 under the name Symbister, then one of approximately 19 houses in Lanchester Road. Thomas Adie was still living there in 1936, when the house was numbered 27. The architect Ewan Macpherson also designed the new Maple & Co store in Tottenham Court Road, built in 1930 (since demolished).