Bevin Court

Bevin Court is a block of 130 flats and maisonettes located on the north-west side of Cruickshank Street in Islington. Designed by the architectural practice Skinner, Bailey and Lubetkin, the first scheme was drawn up in 1946, but the present design dates from 1949 onwards. The building was constructed between 1951 and 1954.

The structure employs reinforced concrete box frame construction clad in pre-cast storey-height aggregate panels finished with Hoptonwood stone chippings—an early use of this material, though now painted—with brick panels positioned under windows. The building features a flat roof and a distinctive Y-shaped plan. It rises eight storeys and comprises two wings of one- and two-bedroom flats, while the third wing to the south-west contains three-bedroom maisonettes. All flats are accessed via balconies reached from lifts and stairs within a central linking drum.

The elevations demonstrate the flexibility of the box frame construction through alternating pairs of windows and panels on alternate floors. On the gallery side, alternating patterns of panels and stations appear throughout. All windows have metal frames with opening side casements and top lights. Each range is topped with tapering, thin rooftop canopies.

Entry is gained through an angled canopy at the centre of the blocks, leading to a remarkable entrance hall. A mural by Peter Yates depicts elements of Finsbury's history and coat of arms arranged as a diorama behind a balustrade. Beyond this, the centre of the drum is filled with a staircase of straight flights rising to central circular landings and onto galleries positioned at alternating angles—Lubetkin's most powerful circular ramp since the Penguin Pool, adapted for human use. Proscenium openings at each landing frame different views across London. A plaque commemorates the building's opening in 1954. The interiors of the flats were not inspected but are not thought to be of special architectural interest.

Bevin Court was the final of three housing schemes that Skinner, Bailey and Lubetkin designed for Finsbury Metropolitan Borough, having first been commissioned there in 1937. The building replaced bombed housing in Holford Square. Lubetkin had a particular interest in the site because Lenin had lived at Holford Square in 1902–1903, a fact that aligned with Lubetkin's ideological sympathies. In 1942 he designed a bust to commemorate Lenin's stay at No. 30 Holford Square, which was displayed in a square frame in the park opposite. The memorial was regularly vandalised. Originally intended to be incorporated into the replacement building, which was to be called Lenin House, the bust was instead buried in the foundations of the new building in 1951 or earlier to prevent further damage. The block was ultimately renamed Bevin Court after Britain's first foreign secretary of the Cold War; as Francis Skinner remarked, they only had to redesign two letters of the sign.

Lubetkin's initial design respected the original form of the square with a series of cranked blocks arranged to avoid a northern aspect, but this proved too expensive within 1948 cost constraints. The scheme was revised in 1949 to place the units within a single block with public space around it. The novel Y-shaped plan ensured there was no northern aspect and was later repeated by Lubetkin in his Dover Estate for Bethnal Green Metropolitan Borough, won in competition in 1951, though less powerfully executed than here.

The staircase represents Lubetkin's most idiosyncratic post-war achievement. Of all his work, it best demonstrates his conviction that 'a staircase is a dance'. It reflects Lubetkin's background in Russian Constructivism, particularly the work of Melnikov and Leonidov, while also functioning as a piece of Baroque geometry given added power through concrete construction. Lubetkin was fascinated by the geometry of what he termed the 'Baroque' squares of the area—a personal response to what was in fact Georgian town planning. Holford House gave the scheme a public face onto Percy Street from the south.