1-65, BROMLEY ROAD

Block of 24 maisonettes, five bedsits and 36 one-bedroom flats built in 1949-50 by Fry, Drew and Partners, with job architect J B Shaw, for Lewisham Metropolitan Borough. Ove Arup and Partners served as engineers. The structure uses a reinforced concrete box frame of complex formation, adapted to short spans on difficult, stripped foundations, and is expressed externally as groups of balconies. The facades are clad in yellow brick with a flat roof behind deep projecting eaves.

The building forms an L-shaped block of two distinct halves, both of five storeys. The longer and most prominent part is curved, comprising two rows of two-storey maisonettes set over one-bedroom flats on the ground floor. All units except those at the southern end are set in pairs, with maisonettes reached by access galleries to the rear. At the end of this range is a way through to a rear playground, adjacent to a workshop and office. In the corner of the block, a lift and stairs are set in a long hall, with a projecting single-storey former laundry and boiler room alongside. The short arm of the block contains a more complex arrangement of one-bedroom flats and bedsits, with those on upper levels featuring balconies and served by a short gallery at the rear.

The elevations are remarkable for their treatment of balconies. The main elevation of the long wing displays five sets of paired balconies, set within extended concrete boxes that form frames around the first, second and third storeys, each thus joining four balconies. Set-back drying areas on the second and fourth floors contrast with these projections. Metal windows with opening casements are an important feature of the design, set within concrete sills and lintels. At the corner stands a fully glazed staircase tower with square panels. The short wing has projecting balconies all set in pairs. At the end, a blue plaque commemorates the estate's Festival of Britain Merit Award of 1951. Windows on side elevations sit in concrete surrounds. Rear elevations are similar, with comparable fenestration and galleries set within the line of the block behind rectangular openings with framed surrounds. Projecting balconies serve as drying areas. Cantilevered balconies at the corner of the block, set at an angle, display delightful virtuosity.

The interiors of the flats are interesting in plan and retain some picture rails and many original doors. A particularly important feature of the development is the specially designed street lighting attached to the walls of the block.

Maxwell Fry was one of the pioneer designers of low-cost flats in the 1930s. This represents the most important development of public housing produced by him and his partners in the post-war period. It is significant as an early and particularly inventive example of the use of box frame construction evolved by Ove Arup during the Second World War. While the use of a curve is seen at Spa Green in Islington, the expression of the box frame as part of a projecting pattern of balconies is distinctive to this building. This is a rich and complex development that thoroughly deserved its Festival of Britain Award. Nikolaus Pevsner considered its greater diversity of small motifs to be its great difference from Fry's pre-war work, and described it as one of the most interesting recent groups of flats in London.

The block is of especial significance in being one of the earliest to incorporate maisonettes. De Quincey House in Churchill Gardens is often said to have been the first, but Passfields was completed a year earlier. The four blocks of Passfields form a harmonious group, enhanced by its excellent state of preservation and landscaping.