Oakbeams (Including Boundary Walls)

Oakbeams is a large detached house with associated boundary walls, built between 1929 and 1931 in The Green, Southgate. It was designed by Paul Badcock FRIBA and constructed for George Cole, a graphic designer and artist's agent.

The house is of two and a half storeys, built in red brick with half timbering and a tiled roof. The exterior displays an irregular front with a projecting gabled range to the right of the entrance. Windows are rectangular with leaded lights and timber mullions. The central gable features herringbone brickwork infill, and a soldier course of angle-set bricks runs at first floor level. Small dormers pierce the attic, and large brick chimneystacks rise prominently from the structure. The rear elevation includes a gabled projection at the southern end with rough elm boarding covering a projecting oriel window of the master bedroom at first floor. The high pitched roof of the central section rises from first floor level through two rows of dormer windows, with lower ranges to either side beneath jettied elm-boarded gable ends.

The interior contains several notable features. The double-height entrance hall has a gallery with exposed timbers, carved panels to the uprights depicting birds, flowers, women and a sentry, decorative plasterwork, and a fireplace with brick surround, tiled decoration and a tapering hood. To the left of the front door is an inscription tablet of Hopton Wood stone, reading "Of earth's fullness are my parts of iron and oakbeams stone and clay to shelter hearts for aye", beneath a relief of an oak branch. The dining room features a fireplace with granite and oak surround. An oak staircase with L-shaped landing ascends through the house. Upper bedrooms include one with carved oak figures of Long John Silver and Robinson Crusoe beneath the inscription "O to be up and doing!", and the master bedroom contains carved oak figures of angels. A panelled room on the second floor was formerly known as the Monk's Room.

The brick boundary wall incorporates earlier fabric, probably of 18th-century date, alongside gabled niches. The front wall includes wrought iron grilles and is inscribed OAKBEAMS MCMXXIX. On the inside of the wall is a stone panel lettered "Let me live in my house by the side of the road while the races of men go by". Two carved oak posts supporting lanterns stand in front of the house.

Oakbeams is an unusually elaborate example of inter-war suburban "Stockbroker Tudor" architecture. The carver of the woodwork, Herbert Joseph Cribb, was an associate of Eric Gill's and signed much of the carved work here, dated to 1931. The interior was largely remodelled in 1935 by Gordon Russell Ltd, a prestigious decorative firm. Some of these fittings were sold in 1973, when the dining room was acquired by the Geffrye Museum for display. The house exemplifies a notable fusion of tradition, sentiment and romance characteristic of suburban culture during the Great Depression, and retains many of its original decorative fixtures of high standard.