The Platanes (Now King'S College Hall)

THE PLATANES (NOW KING'S COLLEGE HALL)

A house built in 1882 for George Egmont Bieber, a City merchant, architect unknown. The building is now part of student halls of residence. Wings were added to the north and south in 1923-25, though these additions are not of special interest.

The house is constructed of buff brick with stone dressings and rises to three storeys above a basement. The asymmetrical front elevation features a recessed central portion with a Corinthian porch, flanked by unequal bays on either side. The south bay has shallow tripartite pilastered bay windows to the ground and first floors, whilst the broader north bay has two-storey canted bay windows, also pilastered. The eaves cornice is dentilled, and windows are one-over-one timber sashes. The rear elevation comprises three bays plus a projecting wing with a two-storey canted bay window to the south.

The plan is complex and substantial. An entrance hall occupies the east side with a large open well stair to the rear, around which sits a former morning room to the south. Running along the west side are a long ballroom, large and small drawing rooms, and a dining room to the north. A large single-storey conservatory, known as the Winter Garden, links through double doors from the west side of the drawing rooms. A secondary stair is positioned north of the entrance hall, whilst upper-floor rooms are accessed from a central gallery around the stair well.

The ground-floor rooms are remarkably unaltered and retain original late 19th-century decorative schemes in eclectic styles, complete with chimneypieces, joinery and parquet floors with decorative inlay. The entrance hall features a glazed timber entrance lobby. The large oak open stair at the rear has turned balusters, panelled strings and soffits. Doors are mahogany with high moulded cornices. The ceiling has an enriched bracketed cornice and square ribbed plasterwork.

The former dining room contains a timber neo-Jacobean chimneypiece with matching dado panelling, and a ceiling with timber cornice and strapwork in a geometric pattern. The former morning room has been subdivided by a partition forming a corridor to the later south wing, but retains its cornice and neo-Jacobean strapwork ceiling. The former ballroom, now library, displays an elaborate plaster ceiling in classical style with a modillion cornice, enriched panels and roundels, some depicting musical instruments, and a carved timber chimneypiece. The large and small drawing rooms also feature ornate ceilings and carved timber chimneypieces with marble bolection mouldings, tiled slips and hearths. Glazed doors lead to the Winter Garden, which has a long elliptical tripartite glazed ceiling lantern, an egg-and-dart cornice, and a coloured tile floor set in a geometric pattern with a mosaic rinceaux border.

The first-floor landing is arcaded on the north and west sides, though the arches are now blocked, and has an enriched bracketed cornice. The second-floor landing is arcaded on the west side. The stairwell is surmounted by a coved painted glass lantern carried on a deep enriched coved cornice. Upper-floor rooms contain cornices and fireplaces, though these were not fully inspected. The secondary stair features turned timber balusters and a moulded handrail. Basement service rooms retain floor and wall tiling and some joinery including fitted cupboards.

The property was built on the Dulwich Estate, a fashionable London suburb within Camberwell. The name derives from the German word for plane tree. Bieber was a member of the German community that had settled in the Champion Hill area. The house was purchased in 1890 by Herman Kleinwort, a banker from the prominent German banking family. As the social character of Champion Hill declined following suburban development with smaller houses for lower-middle-class residents, the Kleinwort family relocated to Belgravia in 1908. Having failed to find a buyer and been refused permission by the Dulwich Estate governors to convert the property into a hotel or nursing home, Kleinwort donated the house to King's College Hospital in 1910. It became a student hall of residence for the hospital's medical school in 1913 and from 1923 for King's College. After the Second World War, the grounds were amalgamated with those of another large house to the south, Danehurst, which also served as a hall of residence and was demolished in the 1970s.

The stables and coach house to the north are not of special interest. The building is designated for its special architectural interest, principally the extent and completeness of its late 19th-century interior decorative schemes and the wealth of original fixtures and fittings, and for its rarity as a large upper-middle-class suburban mansion with a virtually intact interior.