Charlwood And Morgan Houses, Hostel, Community Centre, Boiler House And Walls

Charlwood and Morgan Houses, Hostel, Community Centre, Boiler House and Walls

An L-shaped complex of housing for older people with flats above and behind, incorporating a sunken residents' community hall, boiler house, and one industrial unit (No. 45 Vauxhall Bridge Road). The design won a competition in 1961 by John Darbourne and was detailed and built between 1964 and 1968 by Darbourne and Darke for Westminster City Council.

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

Charlwood and Morgan Houses form the centre of the first phase of Lillington Gardens. The plan is particularly complex. The two blocks are linked by a three-storey hostel for eighty people. The ground floor contains community facilities; the upper two floors comprise fifty bedsits arranged around shared living areas and bathroom facilities, plus forty self-contained flatlets. Above this, Charlwood House contains four floors of one-bedroom single-aspect flats and bedsits (49 in total) accessed via narrow galleries overlooking Vauxhall Bridge Road on the third, fourth, and sixth floors. Two broad paved open walkways link semi-private patio areas on the third and fifth floors. The access galleries incorporate planting boxes and are distinctive within Lillington Gardens for being partially infilled with glazed screens.

On the Vauxhall Bridge Road elevation is a builders' office and store with a ground-floor garage and offices above. Behind the hostel sits the community hall, partially set into the ground, and the boiler house, set further into the ground.

Morgan House comprises eight storeys with 49 flats. Its plan consists of two sections because the hostel undersails one half. Two access galleries on the second and fifth floors have stepped plans and deep planting boxes; the upper one serves four floors of scissor-plan flats, while the lower serves only three floors.

Charlwood House features original dark timber swivel double-glazed casements and many original dark timber doors. The Vauxhall Bridge Road elevation is dominated by the walkways oversailing the hostel. The builders' premises display large folding timber doors set under a large concrete soffit. The rear elevation is more irregular, with paved patios and balconies on alternate floors.

The hostel is distinguished by painted concrete angled sills to the first and second floor glazing, which has been renewed in dark metal. The ground floor contains large plate glass windows to communal rooms. The community hall has a timber fascia and windows. The boiler house, set proud to the north, has an impressive sculptural form without glazing.

Morgan House has a projecting lift tower to the north and access galleries. The south elevation is more regular, with nine bays of flats—four arranged in pairs over the hostel and five to the left arranged more irregularly. All have balconies and retain original dark timber swivel double-glazed casements; most have original dark timber doors.

The hostel has its own part-walled garden in the angle of the block. Retaining walls associated with the community centre and boiler house form an important part of the setting. Original metal signage features black lettering on silvered backgrounds.

Historical Context

John Darbourne won a competition in 1961 for the rebuilding of Lillington Street and formed a partnership with Geoffrey Darke to develop the scheme. The design took its cue from the Grade I listed Church of St James the Less, with its striking Victorian red brick, which the estate surrounds. Architects including Stirling and Gowan at Ham Common, Richmond; Leslie Martin at Cambridge University; and Basil Spence at Sussex University, Brighton, had begun to explore combinations of brick and concrete, but not on the scale or with the intensity of colour achieved at Lillington. Martin and his proteges had also theorised on low-rise high-density housing in their Bloomsbury project and college work at Cambridge, but Lillington was the first low-rise high-density public housing scheme to be built. The estate became epoch-making. The Architects' Journal observed (1 July 1970): "The blocks are more reminiscent of the college campus than of municipal tenements." Lillington influenced the style of council housing from the mid-1960s until the early 1980s.

The scheme won a Housing Design Award in 1969, a Ministry of Housing and Local Government award for good design in 1970, an RIBA Architecture Award in 1970, and a further RIBA commendation in 1973. The Times described it as "An elegant and exciting environment for young and old" (13 September 1972).

Charlwood House Old Peoples' Hostel was part of the original competition brief. It reflected the latest thinking of the Ministry of Housing and Local Government that elderly people should find homes within new developments rather than being treated separately, and that they should remain near their original communities. By incorporating a range of hostel facilities within blocks of ordinary flats, Darbourne and Darke were among the first to respond to this directive of integration. The accommodation they provided was lavish for its date and exceeded the "yardstick" costs later introduced.