Winchfield House And Abutting Chimney

Winchfield House and Abutting Chimney

A block of 75 maisonettes, designed between 1952 and 1953 and built from 1955 to 1958 by the London County Council's Architect's Department. Colin Lucas was the architect in charge, with job architects J A Partridge, W G Howell, J A W Killick, S G Amis, J R Galley and R Stout. W V Zinn and Partners served as engineers.

The building is constructed of a reinforced concrete in-situ frame with board-marked concrete, now painted. The storey-height prefabricated concrete panels feature Dorset shingle and Derbyshire spar exposed aggregate, and the roof is flat.

The plan comprises five tiers, each containing fifteen maisonettes arranged in twelve-foot bays. The structure is raised on alternating lines of two and three piloti at bay intervals along the ground floor, with nine bays south of the lift shaft left open. Double-height lift landings are paved. Each maisonette has a private balcony facing east and gallery access from the west. The upper three tiers of flats additionally feature steel emergency access balconies at bedroom level.

Windows are timber with opening casements, and timber doors are flush. The lift shaft and services are expressed on the roof as geometric shapes. Each maisonette contains a kitchen and living room on the lower level, with two bedrooms, an internal mechanically ventilated bathroom and toilet on the upper level. The internal fittings are not of special interest.

A ramp of board-marked concrete in front of the lifts incorporates a Corbusian-style drip mould, characteristic of the most progressive architecture of the period.

An abutting chimney to the north, of board-marked concrete in an elegant funnel form, is positioned behind Winchfield House but forms a distinctive feature in the line of slabs seen from Highcliffe Drive. It serves the district heating system for the slabs, the first installed by the LCC in any development, and is linked underground to the boiler house.

The slab blocks were inspired by Le Corbusier's Unité d'Habitation in Marseilles, which Howell and others had visited in 1951. The proportions are based on his Modulor and the Fibonacci number sequence. The expression of each maisonette as an individual element in the facade marked a new rigour and sophistication in the LCC's pioneering slab design. The placement of the slabs into the side of the hill, a revision made in 1953, represents a powerful and skilful response to the landscape setting in Downshire Field, an 18th-century landscape much remodelled and enhanced by the team. The steep slope gave purpose to the piloti. The relationship of the blocks to each other and the landscape has been described as a 'majestic' piece of townplanning. The blocks form the centrepiece of the Alton West estate, the LCC's most ambitious post-war development scheme, and have been considered 'probably the finest low-cost housing development in the world'. With its chimney and prominent position, Winchfield House is the most idiosyncratic and most photographed of the group.