Terrace Of Flats, And Former Laundry Block To The Rear

TERRACE OF FLATS AND FORMER LAUNDRY BLOCK, 155-171 OAKHILL ROAD

This is a terrace of four cottages with a detached laundry building to the rear, designed in 1906 by William Hunt, with the design likely the work of his son and partner Edward A Hunt (1877-1963). The buildings are Grade II listed.

EXTERIOR

The terrace is an Arts and Crafts-style building of two storeys plus an attic, constructed of red brick with a large pitched tiled roof and broad brick chimney stacks with brick mouldings. Each cottage has its own front door, set in pairs at right angles to each other within wide Romanesque-arched brick doorways. These archways have chamfered jambs and imposts of tiles laid flat. The original timber doors have vertical panels, two small apertures in the upper portion, and fanlights with diamond leaded panes. The windows are nine-pane timber casements painted white, arranged in twos and threes. In the attic are dormer windows under small hipped roofs. The two central gables feature arrow-loops with tiny tiled keystones. Round arches with keystones frame the two rainwater pipes where they run from the gutter to an iron hopper. Each gable end is crow-stepped and topped with tiles laid flat, as are the party walls between each pair of cottages, which rise above the pitch of the roof. The carriage arch has a timber lintel with timber posts and braces, resting on tiled imposts and an iron gate.

INTERIOR

One flat was inspected internally, revealing an original fireplace with green tiled reveals, built-in cupboards, doors and architraves, and a staircase with timber handrail and turned balusters.

LAUNDRY BUILDING

The carriage arch leads to a rear yard and a detached two-storey laundry building with brick walls (rendered white on its south face), timber casement windows in rows to the south and in a mullion-and-transom arrangement to the north, a pitched roof with splayed eaves, and a brick chimney stack. Inside, the exposed roof structure has curved timber braces with metal tie-beams. The windows have timber lintels, and a surviving original vertical-panelled door remains.

HISTORY AND ORIGINAL USE

William and Edward Hunt's architectural practice was principally in town houses and commercial premises in London's West End, including No. 44 Old Bond Street of 1906 and No. 93 Mortimer Street of 1910. After the First World War, the practice built Brettenham House on the north-western approach to Waterloo Bridge and Wandsworth Town Hall. William Hunt was mayor of Wandsworth in 1902-3, which perhaps recommended his practice to the councillors commissioning the town hall in the mid-1930s and may also explain the firm's designing of these cottages on the fringes of Wandsworth Town.

The cottages were commissioned by James L Purdy and were originally intended to house working families. The row comprised four cottages facing Oakhill Road, each containing a two-bedroom flat on the ground floor and a three-bedroom flat above, alongside the two-storey detached laundry building accessed via the carriage arch. Each flat had roughly the same arrangement: a sitting room at the front, a bedroom behind, and a kitchen, scullery, WC and additional bedroom in the range to the rear.

The laundry building was a commercial premises rather than for domestic use of the tenants. The post office street directory for 1908 lists No. 155 Oakhill Road as "Mrs Sophia Corke, laundry". On the original plans, the downstairs rooms are allocated for sorting and packing, washing, and as the manager's office, with the upstairs presumably for drying, pressing and folding. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Wandsworth was home to many commercial laundries serving the homes and hotels of the growing metropolis.

LATER ALTERATIONS

Minor later alterations have been made, including the subdivision of one of the flats into two. Overall, however, the original plan survives.