70, Wandsworth High Street Sw18

1207/12/7A WANDSWORTH HIGH STREET SW18 14-JUL-55 (North side) 70

GV II Former brewery house, now offices. Early-C18, by bricklayer John Porter, with minor later alterations. Brown brick façade with parapet and M-profile tiled roof behind. 3-storeys and basement. EXTERIOR: 5 window bay façade with central entrance and shorter windows to attic. Grey brick band above ground floor windows and continuous stone cill band below first floor windows; attic windows have individual cills; moulded cornice below parapet. Gauged brick flat arches and dressings to recessed windows that have later sashes with horns. Entrance has grey brick rusticated jambs and C20 wooden hood. Rear elevation plainer and with inserted attic level door; links to later rear wing, which is of lesser interest, and the brewery buildings (q.v.) INTERIOR: Main ground floor room has two c.1730-40 imported plaster medallions with portrait busts in relief representing Inigo Jones and Andreas Palladio, within ornamental surrounds. Full height C18 open-string stair with column balusters and newels, dado panelling. First floor: room to west has C18 marble chimneypiece with scrolled brackets and full cornice; central room has C18 full height complete panelling and deep cornice. Several raised 6-panel doors with deep architraves and L-strap hinges. SUBSIDIARY: Stone capped piers to forecourt wall with wrought iron gate. HISTORY: Built c.1724 for bricklayer John Porter possibly as a brewer's house for the Drapers who brewed on the site in the C18. The plaster medallions are allegedly moved from another larger house in Wimbledon and executed by Italian craftsmen working in London in the early-C18. The house was used as a brewer's house until the brewery was sold to the Trittons in the mid-C18. The Ram Brewery was sold to Young & Bainbridge in 1831, and been used as an office in the C20. See list entry for the Grade II* Brewery for a fuller history.

SOURCES: Helen Osborn Britain's Oldest Brewery: The story behind the success of Young's of Wandsworth' (1999); Lynn PearsonBritish Breweries: an architectural history' (1999: The Hambledon Press); Bridget Cherry and Nikolaus Pevsner, `Buildings of England London: South' (1983, 1994)

Listed as an early-C18 house with a substantially intact and high quality interior including fully panelled room, full-height stair and imported early-C18 plaster panels depicting Inigo Jones and Andreas Palladio, as well as having historic interest as the earliest surviving component of the Ram Brewery, Wandsworth.

Group value with the other listed components of the site: the Grade II* Brewery, the Grade II stables, and the Grade II Brewery Tap.