Peabody Square Block 1

Peabody Square Block 1 is a model dwelling built for the Peabody Trust, now serving as flats. Constructed between 1864 and 1865 by Henry Darbishire, the building features English bond banded stock and grey brick with a slate roof. It has eleven symmetrically placed brick stacks and is five storeys high, with a rectangular eleven-window range and set-back narrow three-window ends. The lower floors have 3/3 sash windows, while the attic includes three narrow casements per bay. A central opening under a painted brick arch contains a 20th-century door. There are painted brick roundels between the second and third, and ninth and tenth bays on each floor, along with a saw-tooth brickwork band at the second floor and a heavy dentil cornice made of artificial stone. The rear elevation mirrors the front but features large four-light staircase windows set under a recessed pointed arch that rises through the centre of four storeys, with a 'P' in a roundel above. There are doors for refuse collection on the ground floor.

Inside, the building was originally designed as a series of two- and three-room suites let weekly, with shared kitchens and lavatories located in the narrow ends. This layout is still recognizable in the arrangement of the twenty flats along the original corridors. Peabody Square Block 1 is notable as the first Peabody estate arranged in a design that became standard across London, and it is the most elaborate of the early schemes.