Stourhead House And Pride Of Pimlico Public House

Stourhead House and Pride of Pimlico Public House

The northern section of Stourhead House comprises 38 flats and maisonettes, a public house, and two shops arranged over a basement carpark. The design was won in competition in 1961 by John Darbourne and built between 1967 and 1970 as part of Phase II of the wider Lillington Gardens development, constructed by Darbourne and Geoffrey Darke for Westminster City Council.

The structure uses in-situ reinforced concrete beams and floors, exposed on the elevations and forming projecting balconies, combined with load-bearing brick crosswalls. The elevations are faced in multi-red hand-made bricks with raked joints, and the roof is flat and felted.

The complex plan comprises three tiers of maisonettes arranged in scissor configuration. The block rises to six storeys facing the gardens and five floors on a raised plinth facing Tachbrook Street. The lowest level contains three- and four-bedroom maisonettes set through gardens on a raised walkway at Tachbrook Street level. Above this are two further levels of three-bedroom maisonettes accessed via a third-floor walkway, with broad planting areas between. Some upper maisonettes include roof gardens. This walkway with its two levels of maisonettes continues as a bridge spanning a two-storey opening over Moreton Street. Flat number 8 is positioned separately to the side.

South of Moreton Street, the lowest tier of two-storey maisonettes is replaced by the Pride of Pimlico Public House with a publican's flat above, alongside two shops with flats above, accessed via their own narrow first-floor walkway.

The maisonette elevations resemble those of the adjacent Forsyth House, with which it forms a continuous stepped wall along Tachbrook Street. The Tachbrook Street elevation features balconies on the second floor, whilst the uppermost two floors display a strong rhythmic alternation of projecting and receding rooms. The gardens elevation has a projecting fourth floor.

Windows are dark stained timber, double-glazed with vertical opening casements (original). Doors were also originally black-stained timber, and most remain in place. Public spaces are lined with brick paviors and shallow brick walls to planting troughs. The high lift lobby is lined in brick with a dog-leg stair featuring a timber balustrade. Original metal signage consists of black lettering on silvered backgrounds. The Public House on the corner of Moreton Street retains timber windows and fascias, though its interior has been remodelled and is not of special interest. The shopfronts to numbers 87 and 89 Tachbrook Street have also been renewed. The maisonette interiors are not of special interest.

The garden walls to the lowest maisonettes, constructed in red brick with some timber balustrading and black-stained gates, form an important part of the composition.

South of the lift lobby, Stourhead House belongs to Phase III of the Lillington Gardens development and is entirely different in style.

Historical Context

John Darbourne's competition-winning 1961 design for the rebuilding of Lillington Street drew inspiration from the nearby Grade I listed Church of St James the Less, with its striking Victorian red brick, which the estate surrounds. Architects including James Stirling and James Gowan at Ham Common, Richmond; Leslie Martin at Cambridge University; and Basil Spence at Sussex University had begun exploring combinations of brick and concrete, but not on the scale, intensity of colour, or complexity of form achieved at Lillington. Martin and his associates had also theorised about low-rise high-density housing in their Bloomsbury project and Cambridge college work, but Lillington Gardens was the first low-rise high-density public housing scheme to be built. As such, it was epoch-making and influential on the style of council housing from the mid-1960s until the early 1980s, described as "more reminiscent of the college campus than of municipal tenements" and "an elegant and exciting environment for young and old."