Garden Corner

House, dated 1879, built by Edward I’Anson Junior. The interior was entirely redesigned and replanned in 1906-7 by C F A Voysey for EJ Horniman, then Liberal MP for Chelsea. The house is four storeys high with an attic containing dormers, and has a six-window front, with the three windows on the right forming a three-storey bay window. Above the bay window is a Dutch Renaissance gable. The exterior is of deep red brick with a high tile roof. The entrance is in the third bay, leading through Voysey’s planked door, with the name "Garden Corner" worked in gilt lettering. The ground and first floors are organised around two principal rooms, and to the rear, or north, of the west room is a full-height principal staircase and top-lit well. Voysey designed a grander open-well stair providing access to the principal entertaining rooms and the library on the first floor, and a lift was installed to the east of the stairwell. A rectangular rear wing with a canted corner to the north-east rises from basement to first floor, with the top forming a roof garden accessible from the second (principal bedroom) floor. The interior features Voysey-designed fixtures—glazing, panelling, flooring, ceilings, fireplaces, clocks, etc.—throughout the house, with particularly prominent decorative work on the ground, first, and second floors, as well as the stairs. The nursery (third) floor has simplified architecture, though the plan remains Voysey’s, and retains fine fireplaces designed by him. The top floor is also by Voysey. The basement, originally lined with Dutch white tiles to improve lighting, has been largely altered by later works. This interior is considered one of Voysey’s finest, notable for the quality of its fixtures and fittings and the ingenuity of its plan.