Number 549 And Gate Piers

Number 549 and Gate Piers, Lordship Lane

House, 1873. The architect is unknown but reasonably attributed to Charles Barry Junior (1823-1900), with the building constructed by Charles Drake of the Patent Concrete Building Company.

The house is built of massed shuttered concrete using Portland cement with an aggregate of burnt ballast (a type of burnt clay), which gives the material a porous honeycombed texture. This concrete was faced with a weatherproof mortar-like composition called compo, and render was used to provide artificial stone detailing to quoins and window details. The roof is slate.

The plan is L-shaped with projecting ground-floor bays and an original porch in the angle (now lost).

The house is designed in Gothic style, comprising two storeys plus an attic with steeply pitched slate-covered gabled roofs. The two principal elevations (south-west and south-east) both feature projecting gables to the left with ground-floor canted bays containing pointed arched Gothic windows with foliate capitals (the windows to the bay on the south-east elevation have been lost since 2001) and two similar arched windows on the first floor, with a final one in the attic storey below traceried bargeboards. The south-west elevation originally had a gabled porch in the return angle but only its concrete base survives; the original panelled door has also been lost. To the right of the porch is a shallow bay on the ground floor with double-arched windows and a concrete canopy, above which sits a single arched window beneath a gablet with bargeboards. The south-east elevation repeats this arrangement except that the two ground-floor arched windows (lost since 2001) do not have the projecting bay. The north-west and north-east elevations, by contrast, have square-headed windows with imitation-stone stucco dressings, except for an arched window below the gable of the north-east elevation. The house has three large concrete chimneys: two positioned in the outer walls on the north-west and north-east sides, and a third projecting through the roof to the right of the south-east gable. Parts of the steeply pitched slate roof have been lost entirely, with only rafters and battens remaining in other areas.

Since its original listing in 1994, the interior has suffered considerable loss. By 2009 it no longer retained its elaborate cornices and ceiling roses, which were clearly part of the building's special interest. The ground-floor plan remains legible as the interior concrete walls survive.

Two pairs of original concrete gate piers and the original low boundary wall survive on Lordship Lane. The main pair of gate piers features trefoil decoration in its gabled design.

The house was built in 1873, probably as the rectory for St Peter's church, which was being constructed simultaneously on the opposite side of Lordship Lane on land owned by the Dulwich College Estate. The architect is currently unknown but it is reasonable to suggest that the designer was Charles Barry Junior, architect of St Peter's, who was Architect and Surveyor for the Dulwich College Estate, having succeeded his father Sir Charles Barry (1795-1860) in 1858. In his work Ye Parish of Camerwell (1875), WH Blanch states that the mansions and villas built on College land were "either from his [Barry's] designs or built under his supervision". The house was constructed of massed concrete by the contractor Charles Drake of 37 Rockingham Street, Newington Causeway, who had previously constructed a number of concrete buildings and was then working on the Grade II* listed Down Hall near Harlow, Essex, designed by FP Cockerell. Drake was one of the foremost advocates of concrete as a suitable building material. The use of massed concrete, where concrete is used to construct walls and other architectural elements by pouring in situ using shuttering, was probably imported as an idea from France, where pioneers such as Francois-Martin Lebrun in the 1830s and Francois Coignet in the 1850s had used the material to construct houses and other buildings, although early English examples are known. The development of concrete was boosted by the development of Portland cement by IC Johnson in the mid-1840s and its use in fireproof floors from around the same date. In 1864 the builder Francis Tall patented a shuttering system, and Drake, who had been Tall's manager, patented an improved version using standardised metal panels in 1867. By the 1970s the building had become a children's home but was unoccupied from the 1980s onwards, leading to its structural decline.