Number 1A Including Area Railings

Number 1A Palace Gate, London W8

Town house, now gaming club, built 1896–98 by architect C. J. Harold Cooper (1863–1909) for William Alfred Johnstone. Contractors were James Simpson and Son of St. Marylebone and Kentish Town. The building replaced an earlier house constructed by Cubitts in 1862–4 for John Forster, the biographer of Charles Dickens, which had contained a library later transferred to the Victoria and Albert Museum.

The Portland stone façade features brown stock brick to the right flank and a slated roof concealed by a tall parapet gable. The building rises five storeys and an attic over a basement. Its design, derived from reconstruction around the core of the earlier house on site, employs the Free Tudor style with mullioned and transomed windows, moulded string courses, attenuated polygonal colonnettes framing the porch, and a heraldic panel (now a modern replacement) set within the tall parapet above.

The façade is articulated by windows with 1:2:1 lights to the right, deeply set within pilasters and profiled corbels forming part of a moulded base to a two-storey canted oriel bay. This bay rises through the first and second floors, with tall twelve-light front and six-light side windows (lighting the drawing room) rounded to the left on the first floor, and eight-light front and four-light side windows (lighting the principal bedroom) with a four-light window to the left on the second floor. The third floor has three windows with 4:6:4 lights each; the fourth floor has two eight-light windows; and the gable contains a single three-light window in its centre. To the left, a set-back square stone chimney with moulded coping links to the neighbouring house. To the right stands a tall multi-flue brick chimney stack with moulded stone copings.

The interior represents a remarkable collaborative project involving the architect, his associate Graham H. Nicholas, and a team of artists and craftsmen, all members of the Art Workers' Guild. The contractors and many of the craftsmen had previously worked for Cooper on Number 15 Stratton Street, Piccadilly, a town house for W. M. Johnstone, William Alfred Johnstone's brother. Stirling Lee, W. S. Frith, F. W. Pomeroy and A. G. Walker undertook stone-, wood- and plasterwork; Nelson Dawson created the ironwork; Selwyn Image and Christopher Whall designed the glasswork; and John Cooke executed frescoes and soft furnishings. Of these craftsmen, Lee, Pomeroy, Image and Whall were all former Masters of the Art Workers' Guild. Much of the original decoration survives beyond the loose furnishings.

The entrance hall features an inner oak screen with twin doors set between Tuscan columns raised on pedestals, with twin oval fanlights having raised keystone surrounds, glazing bars and leaded glazing. The main staircase, positioned to the left of a newel of open well construction, is built in oak with a closed string, posts surmounted by moulded caps, and carved open strapwork pattern balustrade panels with a moulded handrail. The soffit displays moulded strapwork plasterwork, and the ceiling follows a similar design.

The former dining room at the rear is panelled to dado level and contains a stone fireplace with a rubbed brick arch springing from corbel abutments, topped by an elaborate relief-carved heraldic overmantel. A limed oak ceiling, canted and coffered with moulded beams and elliptical arched ribs supported on stone corbels, completes the room.

On the first floor, the former drawing room runs from front to back, its terminating arches separating the main space from the bay windows. It features a pearwood panelled dado and pilasters beneath an arched ceiling divided into panels by moulded ribs with modelled relief decorations. An inglenook fireplace is set in a panelled recess with a plaster vault. The chimney piece combines green Irish and red Verona marbles with yellow Siena marble panels, its design derived from Book VII of Serlio's architectural treatise. To the left, the fireplace is rounded with stained glass depicting stylised trees.

At the rear of the first floor lies an octagonal ante-room faced in Bath stone (now painted over), with a rib and panel vault and a carved figure on the keystone above the doorway. The floor is Pavanazza marble inlaid with red and yellow Verona marble. Beyond this is the former gallery, a two-storey room with an upper balcony featuring Art Nouveau style railings in iron and copper. Copper electroliers with clusters of four bulb pendants by Nelson Dawson occupy the corners. A coved ceiling displays raised relief plasterwork with Egyptian motifs (renewed), and a stained glass laylight by Christopher Whall shows a pattern of trees and foliage.

The former principal bedroom on the second floor front retains some original panelling, a fireplace surround, and moulded cornice and ceiling plasterwork. The basement was gutted and opened out to form new gaming rooms and is not of special interest. The area railings are original ironwork with gilded stylised leaf motifs.

William Alfred Johnstone was the youngest son of James Johnstone, proprietor of The Standard newspaper. The Johnstone family commissioned extensive work from C. J. Harold Cooper, but the Palace Gate house was arguably his most significant project. It was enthusiastically written up and illustrated in The Studio in 1899 by George Hare Leonard, with drawings exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1898. Leonard commended it as 'a house built for a gentleman by gentlemen'.