4A And 5, Sloane Street

Commercial premises with residences above, built 1904-7 by Frank Sidney Chesterton for George Cobb, butcher.

The building occupies a corner position where Basil Street joins Sloane Street. It is a red brick building with stone dressings, four storeys plus a Mansard attic with slate roof and dormer windows. Shops occupy the ground floor with apartments above.

The corner features a canted bay that rises through two of the upper storeys, terminating in a lead domed roof. A Mannerist stone doorcase marks the corner entrance with two carved stone female figures crouching beneath a semi-circular hood with coffered soffit; these figures also appear to support the projecting corner turret. The final storey of the canted corner bay is a concave quadrant with deep-channelled banded rustication and a niche.

The elevations to Sloane Street and Basil Street employ plentiful Portland stone articulation including banded pilasters, shallow two-storey bay windows with mullions and transoms, plat bands, carved cartouches and niches on the upper storey, and a dentil cornice. The larger Sloane Street elevation sits in part under a tall triangular pediment with a central oculus; paired Ionic columns between the mullion windows in the upper storey emphasise the top-heavy detailing. The ground floor features two large shop windows on the corner set between half-columns with blue granite shafts, alongside square artificial stone pilasters articulating the ground floor. A second entrance on Basil Street has a large keystone and carved stone canopy with an oeil-de-boeuf window seemingly held in place by putti clutching drapery.

The communal staircase to the upper floors is a concrete structure with a stylish Art-Nouveau iron balustrade and timber handrail. The stairwell contains leaded stained glass windows in Art-Nouveau style floral designs and timber dado-panelling. Timber doors with reeded flush panels leading from the landings are original; some windows have been incorporated into modern screen partitions on the first floor.

The Cobb family butchers originally occupied No 2 Sloane Street before moving into this new building on the corner of Basil Street in 1907. Chesterton's plans are dated 1904. Two shops occupied the ground floor; the other was initially let to a tailor, then subsequently to a jeweller and a milliner. Post Office Directories record other tenants on the upper floors, including a dressmaker and private residents. The Cobb family butchers traded from No 5 Sloane Street until the 1980s.

Frank Sidney Chesterton came from a family of Kensington property owners and surveyors; the family business, founded in 1805, still operates as estate agents. Most of his buildings are in the Kensington area, including the Grade II-listed terrace at 12-54 Horton Street (1903) and Horton Court, High Street Kensington (1906). He also worked on houses on the Norbury Manor Estate in 1904, one of the London County Council's first 'Out-County' estates. Chesterton died from wounds sustained in the Battle of the Somme in 1916.