Noah'S House Boathouse

Noah's House Boathouse is a boathouse and workshop, with a music room or spare bedroom above, dating to 1930. It was designed by Colin Lucas for his father and built by Lucas Lloyd and Co. The building is constructed using monolithic reinforced thin wall concrete, rendered and painted white, with a flat roof that creates an overhanging hood. This represents an early example of the Modern Movement style.

The structure is a long, rectangular block with a curved workshop at the landward end and a rectangular music room towards the river. There are eleven windows in total. A plain entrance to the boathouse is accessed via the workshop. A first-floor entrance to the music room is approached by a double flight of external steps with curved monolithic balustrades; a large segmental arched balustrade is located at the base of the steps. The boathouse windows form a continuous strip along the length of the building, running beneath the overhanging hood, and feature frameless glazing puttied directly into the rebated concrete mullions. The music room has similar windows overlooking the river and the boathouse roof. French doors opposite the entrance lead to a small balcony with a monolithic balustrade. A simple double opening provides access to the river, sheltered by the hood.

Noah’s House, now much altered and extended, and the boathouse were among the first reinforced concrete buildings in Britain in the Modern Movement style. Colin Lucas, son of a motor car designer, sought to understand how this new style could be constructed in concrete and established his own building company upon leaving university. This is his oldest surviving work. The innovative system of setting windows directly into the concrete, using rebated mullions, was widely imitated by architects in the 1950s and 1960s. Lucas later formed a partnership with Amyas Connell and Basil Ward, and subsequently supervised construction projects for the London County Council.