Tower Gardens: an LCC garden suburb

The oldest part of the Tower gardens garden suburb is built along parallel streets with long rows of terraced housing in a style referencing the Arts And Crafts Movement. The Arts and Crafts Movement revolved around a search for authentic styles in the latter part of the 19th century as a reaction to machine production. The movement promoted the idea that art and craft were the same thing and that the decorative arts are not to be valued higher than the applied arts. Typically the buildings have the upper half of the facade pebbledashed and whitewashed; the rest is faced with red brick.

The corners are emphasised by bringing the building line forward or by a difference in material. These are classic Unwinesk devices in the Arts and Crafts tradition, inspired by the writings of John Ruskin and the work of William Morris. Similarly the use of low shot double gable ends to break up the facade and thus scale down the sense of urbanity is a well known Unwinesk design principle.  

The Architect William Edward Riley (1852-1937) was the Chief Architect of the LCC Architects Department. He was also a prominent member of the Art Workers Guild, founded in 1884 by leading lights in the Arts and Crafts movement. He is responsible for the design of the buildings in the first building campaign. A prominent feature of the houses are protruding bays that give a certain rhythm to the facade.

The attention to detail is typical of Arts and Crafts inspired architecture. This style of architecture is often extremely various and mingled with other stylistic trends. The basis for the style are borrowed medieval and 18th century motifs. Trelliswork, wooden arches, stone moldings, jettying upper floors, and pebble dash are examples of such borrowed motifs in the architecture.

On the south side of Tower gardens Road and on the edges of the oldest buildings the a stylistic shift can be observed. The buildings are now faced with brick and have a much less cottage-feel to them.

George Topham Forrest (1872-1945) was a Scottish architect who was recruited by the LCC to design their Becontrees Estate in Barking. He succeeded Riley as the chief architect for Tower Gardens. He had a preference for neo-Georgian architecture with houses having square-paned sash windows, unadorned brick facades, and plain front doors with small canopies above. The effect of his tenure can be clearly seen in the second and third extensions.

Topham Forrest also breaks away from his predecessor in the use of Unwinesk spatial arrangements. Here an example of a classic Unwinesk widening of the street space into a semi-private room by setting back the building line of the central part of the buildings on either side.

The building designed by Topham Forrest are quite stern in appearance but have lots of lovely detailing. Brick and masonry are  used to great effect together with detailing around the doors and windows.

Also, under the influence of the Garden city movement, Topham Forrest had the buildings laid out informally and grouped at road junctions and around small greens. The sightlines were shortened by the use of bending streets, closes and by using T-junctions. The short sightline on the T-junctions are emphasised by the use of a gable end in the axis.

A small park, the Tower Gardens, is part of the first expansion. It is a park typical for the 1910s with winding paths and planted with trees and shrubs around a central lawn area. The paths form a basic pretzel shape with additional path running of it. The park can be entered through one of three such gates.

Built as a housing project for displaced people from Shoreditch Topham Square was completed in 1924 and consist of apartments in 7 buildings around a central green. This housing differs greatly from its surroundings, not only in type of accommodation, but also in colour, material, building height and roof shape.

The height of the buildings is emphasised by the entrances in a tower-like section topped with a gable. The facade is covered with sand coloured roughcast. The apartment blocks are arranged around a green square in an orthogonal way. The Mansard roof is used to give the appearance of a lower building but still accommodating a third floor of apartments in the roof space.  

The large buildings are clearly inspired by German examples of so-called Mietshäuser around a Gartenhof, both in appearance and in layout.

The Roundway has been designed as a parkway with green verges planted with trees. The low housing on either side is dwarfed by the scale of this very wide road. The Roundway is part of a new northern route and connects to the Great Cambridge Road.

East of the Roundway we find the 1920's expansion with white rendered buildings, often with a central top gable to break the roofline. In classic Garden City style the buildings on road junctions are set at a 45° angle to emphasise the junction and allow for longer views.

West of the Roundway the earliest expansion of the housing estate has been executed using yellow brick facades with some detailing like a masonry ribbon demarcating the two floors.

This first expansion beyond the Roundway also includes three closes. A close is a classic Unwinesk design element.

Another Unwinesk device, setting back the building line halfway up the street to create a widening of the road space is used again on the west side of the Roundway.

In the late 1920s the architects start to mix brick faced and white rendered terraces, probably to prevent an sense of uniformity and sameness. The white buildings are -apart from colour- very similar to the brick faced ones.

To maximise the usable space inside in these not to large houses, the front doors are set at an angle within a porch. The doors open directly into the front reception room. In places the bricks have been painted white. This seems to have been done at a much later date, probably to hide alterations in the facade.

In the area north of White Hart Lane U-shapes housing courts can be clearly seen on the plan. In reality these mathematical shapes are less strict because they have had to be built on a slope. The central green and closed facades on three sides shows an influence from German examples.

Along some roads building firms have built private housing that is often very standerdised. It differs greatly from the coherently designed LCC-neighbourhouds, but little from other suburban from the same period elsewhere. In the 1930s architecture the streetscape is livened by using blocks of light colour on rendered facades, to contrast with the rather dark brick used.  

This crescent like garden court is a variation on the theme. By choosing a les angular shape the housing sits much more comfortably on the site. Again this kind of architecture reveals a German influence on the design.