Numbers 15 And 16 And Attached Walls

SP 5106 NW OXFORD BLACKHALL ROAD (West side)

612/5/10038 Nos. 15 and 16 (Consecutive) and attached walls

GV II

Two houses. 1963 by the Architects Co-Partnership (Michael Powers) for St John's College. Concrete block with white facing bricks, with concrete ring beams. Internal timber construction to first floor and roof. Flat roofs with projecting concrete tank housings. Nos. 15 and 16 are larger in plan than No. 17, by the same architects, semi-detached and set in echelon, with mirrored plans. All facades show concrete ring beams as inset banding in brickwork, projecting to form hood to front door and at roof level projecting to form rainwater hoppers. Houses stand behind earlier stone wall on street and earlier stone garden wall extending from house. On entrance front, principal windows ranged over each other to form continuous vertical bands, with narrow horizontal windows extended to corners on first floor. Rear elevations have similar configuration. A single storey extension was added to no 16 in 1973 to a design by Cluttons, which is sympathetic to the design of the main building. Interiors. No 15 has plastered ceiling, no 16 has pine-boarded ceilings. Both have frameless doors and some fitted pine units between dining room and kitchen and as linen cupboards and dressing tables. Black quarry tile floors throughout ground floor, pine floors to first floor. Exposed brick in hallways with timber ladder stair rising in curved well. A carefully detailed group of Fellows' houses for St John's College, Oxford. They are rare domestic works by this leading practice of the post-war period. The grey brick and concrete are a Brutalist version of the traditional stone colouring of Oxford, tactfully screened from the street. Source (Nikolaus Pevsner and Jennifer Sherwood: Buildings of England, Oxfordshire: Harmondsworth: 1974-: 315; Penelope Whiting: New Houses: 1964-: 40-47)

Listing NGR: SP5126806877