Flint Barn

1329/0/10065 MOSTYN ROAD 05-NOV-03 35 Flint Barn

II House. 1923 by John Sydney Brocklesby, incorporating earlier timbers. Reinforced concrete, faced in flint and with reused timber internally, tiled roof, red brick chimney, wooden window surrounds with square leaded panes. Rectangular plan with a large double-height 'great hall' to the right. Exterior: main front faces north, with a small porch to left, a ten-light window to centre and a long low ten-light dormer window set into the roof above two smaller ground floor windows. Gently pitched tiled roof with slightly upswept eaves. The east side wall has a ten-light mullioned window placed off-centre. The south (garden) elevation has a modern brick extension which is not of special interest. To its right are French windows, with another ground floor window to the right of that; at first floor level are three windows set beneath the eaves. The west end has a large mullioned window in thre registers. Interior: a double-height 'great hall' with southern gallery and a large inglenook fireplace occupies much of the right hand side of the interior; the gallery has been infilled but the turned balusters supporting it are in situ. The ground floor originally had a hall, kitchen, pantry, den, dining and drawing room; the first floor had three bedrooms, two dressing rooms, a bathroom and a box room; these spaces essentially survive in other uses. History: this house was designed by the idiosyncratic late Arts and Crafts Merton architect John Sydney Brocklesby for his friend, an ostrich feather merchant turned antique dealer, J.E. H. Baker, who sought a new house in which his collection of furniture could be showed off to effect. He re-used many timbers from a demolished barn on Baker's End Farm, which his development of the Whatley Avenue Estate had demanded. Brocklesby took as his main insiration the form of Merton church, but described the overall effect as 'Elizabethan'. The inspiration may have been historical, but the construction technique employed - reinforced concrete, the reinforcements coming from redundant aeroplane elements - were contrastingly up-to-date. This was Brocklesby's first use of this technique: Brocklesby ran into problems with the local authority over building regulations. This vernacular revival house is very unusual in the context of 1920s suburban housing, and is a characteristic work of Brocklesby's, who undertook much design work on the John Innes Estate in Merton from 1904 onwards.

SOURCES: Christopher Spencer & Geoffrey Wilson: 'Elbow Room - The Story of John Sydney Brocklesby Arts and Crafts Architect', 72-75.