10, Blackheath Park

TQ 3975 786/45/10129 01-JAN-00

BLACKHEATH PARK Blackheath (South side) 10

GV II

Private house. 1968-9 by Patrick Gwynne for the contractor Leslie Bilsby. Concrete and load-bearing brickwork, clad in near-black slate and aluminium-framed bronzed curtain walling. Near flat roof with central skylight. Two storeys and basement, originally designed as two garages for three cars, one side now adapted as guest room. Symmetrical double fronted plan set round central staircase. A pentagonal room of equal size in each corner, linked by rectangular circulation rooms.

Slate covered stairs and ramp lead to central door. The windows arranged in vertical bands above and in projecting corners to either side, with bronzed aluminium frames. Double doors to rear on to patio, with single flight of steps to garden which has aluminium handrail; otherwise the rear elevation parallels that to front.

Interiors are lined with plywood panels faced with white and black plastic cloth, except for the central walls which are plastered. These plastered walls, and the staircase, incorporate built-in niches for the display of ornaments. Many original built-in cupboards around the central staircase core, particularly on first floor and in servery, which also retains some sliding kitchen cupboards and storage unit. A similar sliding unit on the other side of the house. Red double sliding doors link the rooms, each one counterweighted so that by pulling one, you move both.

No. 10 Blackheath Park was built for Leslie Bilsby, the contractor responsible for many of the nearby Span developments. He had become friendly with Gwynne in the 1930s, and was the contractor for much of the joinery work at the latter's first house, The Homewood, Esher, built for his parents in 1937-9. Gwynne had earlier remodelled No. 115 Blackheath Park for Bilsby, and No. 10 was its replacement when it was demolished for Span's Parkend estate. Bilsby specified that he wanted a house with a separate living room, dining room, kitchen and study, and that this determined the plan. The design reflects the nature of the adjoining early nineteenth-century double-fronted bayed houses, in a very different idiom and materials. Gwynne has written that `the elevational treatment was intended to result in a frankly contrasting infill between the two period houses on either side but in such a manner that it would compliment the neighbours rather than appear as a separate unrelated building.'

Sources Patrick Gwynne, unpublished account of his work, n.d. Bridget Cherry and Nikolaus Pevsner, The Buildings of England, London 2 South, 1983, p.276. Neil Bingham, `The Houses of Patrick Gwynne', in Twentieth Century Architecture 4, forthcoming.