Grosvenor Estate: an example of Lutyens brilliance

The Grosvenor Estate comprises of 7 apartment blocks 5 storeys in height. All have the very distinctive checkerboard facades in panels of grey brick and white render. This makes this complex instantly recognisable. The two buildings -Duke House and Princess Mary House- along Vincent Street are also adorned by stone carvings representing noble crests. The door surrounds built from carved stone are also very ornate.

The U-shaped blocks between Vincent Street and Page Street with the large playground where once the ends of the central wings of Tothill House and Rogers House originally stood. The greenery softens the very urban feel of this housing project.

All apartment block are named in the tradition of Mansion Blocks as if they were a nobleman's city dwelling. Between the U-shaped blocks small pavilions (shown on the right) were constructed with a gate on either side. Some now serve a commercial function and double-up as a guard house, as was originally intended.

Inspired by the German Gartenhof, the apartment blocks wrap around a communal garden with all the balconies looking out over this green space. The ideal was to provide light and air in the urban environment, especially for the working classes that often worked in non to healthy conditions.

The space between the blocks is actually quite limited. The communal areas are fenced off and in use as a communal garden -originally laid to lawn for drying the laundry- or as playground or small playing field.

Grosvenor Estate: propose-built social housing

Millbank, directly adjacent to the area of Pimlico south of Westminster was a rural area until the eighteenth century. The area is named after the Abbey Mill, first noted in a 1565 rate book. This mill on the river Tyburn was a wheat mill of Westminster Abbey that stood on what was once Thorney Island. There was also a river mill in place on the Thames. The Abbey Mill was bought in 1721 by the Chelsea Water Company and demolished around 1736. The river Tyburn was culverted after the Great Stink of 1858 and become a discharge channel for the connecting sewers towards the Thames at a point near Vauxhall Bridge. Much of the area remained semi-rural until the nineteenth century apart from some development along the edges including some large mansions along the riverfront. One of these mansions was Grosvenor House, the London home of Lord Grosvenor, the Duke of Westminster until 1806. He also owned the land at Millbank as well as adjoining Pimlico.

Tothill Fields stretching from Horseferry Road to the southernmost reach of the Tyburn was used for pasture with some 200 cows grazing here. This land owned by the Grosvenors was mainly developed in the 19th century with some development adjoining the southern outskirts of the city of Westminster started in the last half of the 18th century.

In 1928 a number of street with slum housing were condemned by the health inspector. Private developers had erected these buildings on land leased from the Duke of Westminster. Lord Grosvenor 2^nd Duke of Westminster took the land back and had the buildings demolished. He commissioned the famous architect Edwin Lutyens to design a complex of social housing in its stead. This became the Grosvenor Estate with parallel apartment blocks, built after German examples. The architecture is very striking with a checkerboard pattern of brick and rendered panels.

On the northern part of Tothill Fields the Grosvenor Estate (1) stands next to Horseferry Road. Most of the old buildings were redeveloped after WW1 and again after WW2. So nowadays large complexes lie in close proximity: The Millbank Centre (2), MI6 (3) and Abell House (4) and Cleland House (5) two recent very up-market housing developments at the site of former government offices.

After completion in 1937 the Duke of Westminster grants a lease to Westminster Council of 999 years to let out the apartments. He stipulates the condition that the housing is meant for the housing of the working classes. In total 532 flats were built in middle-rise buildings of 5 storeys. Narrow communal gardens were laid out in-between the blocks. Part of two blocks were never rebuilt after bomb damage during the Blitz and instead laid out as a large playground. The whole complex is listed.

Milbank Estate: brick-built municipal housing

The Millbank Estate comprises of 17 apartment blocks of 5 to 7 storeys in height. All are constructed in brick. The pollarded plane trees are just starting to unfold their leaves.

The style of architecture is rather traditional. The large chimney stacks (shown o the left) are an example of this. The overall feel of the architecture is less Mansion Block and more Dutch-revival as is clearly shown on the right with the high gable ends and the use of long dormers on the steep pitched roofs.

The central school building is lower than the housing that surrounds it. It is also built in a different colour brick. The sandy yellow colour dominates the facades. Red brick is used as accents around the windows, doors and in banding. This creates a more English gothic-revival feel for this building setting it apart from the surrounding housing blocks.

The plinths of the apartment blocks are similar to the design of the school. The large and ornate entrance surrounds in carved stone painted white are very eye-catching. Ornament also stretches further up as small turrets on the corners embellish the architecture as a way of counteracting sameness between the blocks.

The blocks either side of the Millbank Gardens are arranged in a parallel manner. These blocks clearly show of the architecture to its best advantage, especially now that the trees are not obscuring most of the facades.

The stone surround of the entrances are rather shapely neo-baroque additions. In similar style some of the blocks were designed with high gable ends resembling Dutch Gables. Here an example that combines the Spout and Bell Gable. The protruding sections flanking a balcony are a lovely device to add interest to this large building facade.

Some of the blocks resemble warehouses from Amsterdam with the long facades and the white top section just below the roof.

Millbank Estate: turn of the century social housing

On a site not far from where once a mill has stood on the Thames lies the area known as Millbank. Here the first modern prison in London, Millbank Penitentiary would be opened in 1816. The marshy site in Pimlico was purchased on behalf of the Crown by Jeremy Bentham to build the first example of the Panopticon he had devised. This National Penitentiary was eventually constructed after plans by William Williams, redesigned by Thomas Hardwick and built by John Harvey and his successor Robert Smirke as the site proved difficult for the erection of such a massive construction. It had separate cells for 860 prisoners and served as a holding facility for prisoners before transport to Australia. The prison was costly to run and in time it was decided to make the Model Prison Pentonville into the National Penitentiary and abandon the Millbank facility.

In 1885 the site is thus earmarked for development and demolition of the fortress-like prison complex began. The principle buildings erected in its stead, were the National Gallery of British Art, now rebranded Tate Britain (built 1893-1897) and the Royal Army Medical School (1905-1907) now in use by the Chelsea College of Art & Design. Following on from the Boundary Estate in Shoreditch the London County Council (LCC) decides to develop the site for a large-scale, inner-city housing complex for the working classes. In those days the wharfs and warehouses on the Thames lay close by, so the provision of housing for harbour workers made sense. In 1896 a street plan is approved. Construction starts in 1897 and ends in 1902. For the construction bricks from the demolished prison were used.

The octagonal outline of the prison complex can still be recognised in the street plan of this part of Pimlico. Tate Britain (1) takes pride of place on the river bank. Behind it the LCC Millbank Estate (2) and the Millbank Gardens (3). The CCAD occupies the former medical school (4).

The apartment blocks were designed by R. Minton Taylor in a style in-between the Mansion Block and Dutch-revival brick architecture. The result is a convincing ensemble of symmetrically arranged, asymmetrically detailed blocks on a plinth and with stone door surrounds. The estate comprises of 17 buildings, each named after a distinguished painter. The streets were planted with London Plane trees. Between the blocks communal gardens, laid to lawn, were included. At the centre a winged building with a school for boys and a school for girls was included in the scheme. Whilst the housing blocks were being constructed the Millbank Gardens were laid out as a public greens space for the residents. It is best described as a Public Garden in the tradition of the German People's Park. The Millbank Estate can be seen as an example of the German tradition of social housing in so-called Reform-Mietskasernen, predating the Gartenhof.

The whole complex, including the public garden, is now Grade II listed.

Subtle Spring: Hello Hellebore

Also known as Winter rose the Hellebore belongs to the genus Helleborus within the family Ranunculaceae and isn't related to roses at all, but to buttercups and peonies. These herbaceous and often evergreen plants are (very) poisonous which is also expressed in their scientific name which translated as harmful food. The greatest concentration of species van be found in Europe, mainly in the Balkans with some species from Asia. The most commonly grown garden plants include Helleborus niger (the Christmas rose), H. lividus, H. corsicus and H. x hybridus (derived from H. orientalis). All flower early in the year, some even in the middle of winter.

H. x hybridus 'Double White', on the left, a seedling gifted to me by my mother. In some years it flowers better than in others, sadly. H x nigercors is a hybrid of the Winter rose and the Corsican Lent rose. H. lividus flowers with green cup-like flowers. This might be a hybrid with some blood of H. foetidus, a plant also known as Dungwort.