8/8A Old St Andrew'S Mansions

TQ 28 NW 935/2/10047

OLD CHURCH LANE (East off) 8/8A Old St Andrew's Mansions

GV II

Two flats with integral garages. 1936 by Ernest George Trobridge. Brick, with render to upper storey and gable, though this interrupted by patterned brickwork defining the stack on the end gable which is characteristic of Trobridge's idiom; half timbered two-storey porch. Tiled roofs. Two storeys, with external brick stair leading to upper flat behind brick retaining wall. Some rebuilding to adjoining wing containing garage. Lattice paned timber casement windows; original doors have been stripped and varnished. INTERIORS not inspected, but understood to retain panelling to living rooms, with picture rail and deep frieze and ceiling cove above. Doors lined in the same timber. The other rooms with coved ceilings and bedroom with picture rail. Included as part of the best surviving group of flats by E G Trobridge, an eccentric local architect whose limited surviving works are concentrated in the Kingsbury area where he lived. His own house in Slough Lane is already listed, and it was with a series of timber-framed houses that he came to attention in the 1920s, for he developed a method of using unseasoned timber and unskilled ex-servicemen to build cheap yet charismatic homes for heroes. In the 1930s he went on to build flats, of brick but again with quirky detailing, of which only Nos.1/1a-12/12a St Andrew's Mansions survive in listable condition. The detailing is inspired by Trobridge's devout Swedenborgian beliefs, Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772) proposed a system of "correspondence" whereby worldly, spiritual and divine ideas could be related together. Trobridge wrote in 1909 that 'the philosophy of Swedenborg affects every detail of every structure ... the doctrine of degrees enables one to divide each problem into end, cause and effect.' The effect on his work was the idiosyncratic expression of every chimney, staircase and external detail, while his understanding of timber enriched otherwise humble interiors. The result is to make his artisan rented housing quite remarkable. Source Oxford Brookes University, Ernest George Trobridge, Architect Extraordinary, 1982.

Listing NGR: TQ2064486749