Meston Walk, Crombie Halls Of Residence

Meston Walk, Crombie Halls of Residence is a large complex of residential buildings designed by Sir Robert Matthew between 1953 and 1956 and constructed from 1957 to 1960. The complex features a five-storey, six-bay entrance block with a single-storey, curved wing to the east and a loosely arranged courtyard to the north that consists of two and three-storey buildings, all linked by single-storey sections. The buildings are made from a variety of materials, including harling, timber cladding, and bullfaced random rubble cladding. The windows are mostly timber framed and horizontally oriented, with distinctive L-shaped door and window arrangements at the ground floors of some courtyard blocks. The roofs are predominantly pitched and covered with pantiles, while the single-storey linking sections and the southern block of the courtyard have flat roofs. Notable features include rounded corners on the inner edges of the glazed timber door frames.

The entrance block has a ground floor made of rubble and timber cladding, with harling above and some sections of timber cladding. The west elevation has a ground floor that extends to form a terrace, which is accessed by external concrete steps. The upper stories of the west elevation feature two slightly recessed bays on the right. There is a single bay on the north and south elevations, and a gable end stack on the north elevation. The east elevation includes a single-storey timber-clad entrance foyer that projects to the left, while to the right there is a long single-storey wing that is timber and rubble clad, featuring a curved southern elevation, a long strip window, a set-back inverse-pitched clerestory, and a double-height glazed eastern end.

The courtyard blocks include the southern block, which is a rectangular two-storey structure predominantly clad in timber with some harling and a flat roof. The western block intersects with a linking section from the southern block at the center and is a three-storey rectangular structure that is harled with rubble-clad gable ends and a projecting stair tower. The northern block is a two-storey rectangular plan with a central section that is timber clad and features continuous glazing on both floors, flanked by harled sections at both ends. The eastern block is a three-storey rectangular structure that is harled with rubble-clad gable ends and slightly projecting single stair bays on the eastern and western elevations.