Walton Court, formerly Birds Eye Offices, including courtyards, water garden features and front pool

Walton Court, formerly Birds Eye Offices

This is a long, low, flat-roofed rectangular building of three storeys, 318 feet long by 170 feet deep, constructed from a precast concrete and pre-stressed concrete frame. The floor construction uses high alumina cement beams at 700 to 750 millimetre intervals, supporting concrete slab floors and achieving an office floor span of 42 feet (approximately 13 metres) without internal columns. The building is laid out on a 5 feet 3 inch module and is set around two open internal courtyards. A block added to the west creates a T-shaped layout overall. The building is arranged as two floors of offices over a directors' suite overlooking the pool and gardens, with services concentrated in three structural service cores.

The curtain wall comprises plate glass and anodised aluminium over blue vitreous enamelled spandrel panels. At ground floor level there is a bush hammered concrete arcade, now white-rendered. Plant rooms are concealed behind pierced ceramic screens.

The principal elevations are crisp and rhythmical, created by anodised aluminium curtain walling of half-hexagonal sections attached to paired aluminium mullions, set against dark blue vitreous enamel spandrel panels and as fascia above the first floor windows. Floor to ceiling glazing runs across all floors. On the ground floor, glazing is set behind arcades of bush hammered concrete piers, arranged on a ratio of 1:4 with the upper floor bays. Canted beams echo the hexagonal forms in the upper floors. The entrance is set below a deep, shaped canopy with a corrugated soffit, echoing the profile of the ground floor arcade and loosely resembling a bird in flight. The entrance is lined in white grained marble, with a similar floor.

Plant rooms on the roof are clad in pierced screens with very narrow gauge, square gridded cladding. The building is set back from the road behind open lawns and ponds. The entrance is positioned to the south, minimising intrusion in a residential area and avoiding interruption to the long roadside elevation.

The courtyard elevations are similarly detailed to the principal facades, with doors opening onto them. The courtyards were designed by Philip Hicks. The paved eastern courtyard contains a sunk pond with a fountain and tall monolithic fluted concrete forms by Allen Collins, set on concrete plinths. The western courtyard has raised cantilevered concrete slabs of various heights and shallow concrete-edged beds on a concrete surface strewn with boulders.

An L-shaped reflective pool is integral to the design, enclosed by low concrete parapet walls and paving strewn with boulders and planted with reeds and water lilies. Adjacent to the entrance, mounted on a rocky base, is a bird sculpture by John McCarthy.

The interior marble-lined entrance lobby leads to an entrance hall or foyer. The ground floor stairwell and lift stack are faced in marble and fluted timber panelling, with the eastern wall fully glazed where it overlooks the eastern courtyard. Stairs at the rear rise above a shallow marble-lined pool fed by water stoups projecting from the core of the stairwell and lift stack. The lower flight of the stairs has open treads, providing a view of the pool.

A second block was added in 1967 or 1968, similarly treated but without ground floor arcades, joined to the original building by a glazed link.