Wisley House Lillington Gardens Estate With Attached Walls And Steps

Wisley House is a block of thirty flats and maisonettes built between 1969 and 1972 by architects Darbourne and Darke for the City of Westminster as part of the Lillington Gardens Estate on Rampayne Street.

The building is constructed with red brick walls and concrete slab floors, with the slab edges exposed as painted bands. The roof is clad in felt with distinctive mansards finished in artificial slate and metal edges. The development features slab walkways and concrete and brick steps throughout.

The complex scissor plan arranges maisonettes to both the front and back of the building behind walled gardens. The rear units (nos. 8–14) are set lower and include extra kitchen and dining rooms. All living rooms face the street, with bedrooms positioned on the garden elevations. Above these sit one-bedroom and studio flats (nos. 15–30) accessed from a roof-top street in the sky, some reached via external stairs. The larger units occupy two levels fronting the garden with internal stairs under separate sloping felt roofs. The building rises to five and six storeys. Living rooms on upper storeys feature blue balconies. All windows are grey metal, and doors are black timber, some with glazed panels. Stairs to the upper street have timber balustrades and handrails, linked by ramp to the adjoining Priory House.

The estate was developed following John Darbourne's competition win in 1961 for the rebuilding of Lillington Street. The design took its cue from the adjoining Grade I listed Church of St James the Less, with its striking Victorian red brick. The initial phases of Lillington pioneered low-rise high-density solutions for public housing, with Darbourne rejecting symmetrical free-standing blocks in favour of contextual designs allowing residents distinctive elements with which to identify themselves.

For this third phase, the architects revised their original designs to introduce more maisonettes for families with their own front doors. Nearly half the units now have ground-level front doors and small gardens, with more private than public open space. The slate mansards, introduced here for the first time in their work, became a distinctive feature of their later Marquess Estate at Islington. The scheme achieved densities of 255 persons per acre while accommodating substantial family accommodation. The building won an RIBA Commendation in 1973 and was widely praised as an innovative approach to public housing, influential in subsequent developments.