4-8, Golders Green Road

31/0/10416 GOLDERS GREEN ROAD 09-JUL-02 Golders Green 4-8

GV II

4-8 Cheapside. Bank with flats above. C.1921 by Herbert A. Welch with H. Clifford Hollis. Red brick with some tile-hanging, tiled roof. Three and four storeys. Triangular site. Vernacular revival style. EXTERIOR: south-facing frontage to street of five bays. Ground floor windows with mullions and transoms, door to centre. Former entrance on angle now blocked, with cash dispenser inserted. Continuous fascia with dentil cornice. Left-hand par and right-hand bays with oriels rising up to eaves, those to left with stone mullioned windows. Central bay over door with oriel to first floor, tile-hung to second; other windows set back. Overhanging eaves to hipped roofs, tall chimneystacks. Canted corner with chimney-breast rising up to triple stacks of brick, with a matching pair of oriels to the left-hand return, over mullion and transom windows. Golders Green Crescent frontage continues at a lower height, with four bays in pairs of two divided by a central recess spanned with a tiled roof ridge carried on struts, with the side entrance to flats below. INTERIOR: bank interior comprehensively refitted in recent times. Upper floors not inspected. HISTORY: this building completes the Cheapside development, part of the Golders Green shopping centre which developed rapidly in the first decades of the 20th century. The architects, Welch and Hollis, had worked with Parker and Unwin on the design of Hampstead Garden Suburb and this block constitutes a late but highly effective example of the vernacular revival style as applied to this notable suburban development.