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.

Tower Gardens, Tottenham

By the end of  nineteenth century Tottenham had become a village suburb of London, still surrounded by fields, but connected to London by railway and tramline. Today, Tottenham forms part of the Borough of Haringey and is thus a part of the Greater London Metropolitan Area. Originally known as the White Hart Lane Estate, the Tower Gardens Estate links the north part of Tottenham with Wood Green. Development started in 1901, when the London County Council, bought some 225 a. of farm-land with the intention of housing over forty thousand people.

The London County Council (LCC) was established in 1889 with the creation of the County of London as part of the general introduction of elected county government in England, by way of the Local Government Act 1888. The local authority for the county was the LCC. In 1900 the lower-tier civil parishes and district boards were replaced with 28 new metropolitan boroughs. In 1965, the London Government Act 1963 replaced the county with the much larger Greater London administrative area. The old County of London is now known as Inner Londen. The LCC proposed to build housing as a result of the 1890 Housing of the Working Classes Act, that gave local authorities new powers to create homes on the outskirts of the city to relieve overcrowding in the inner city areas. The LCC sought land within (Tooting) and outside of the county in Acton, Tottenham (both in Middlesex), Croydon (in Surrey) and Barking (in Essex).

The Tower Gardens Estate occupies a special place in history as one of the world’s first municipal garden suburbs. The area had hitherto belonged to the Awfield Farm, part of the Tottenhall Estate (now Bruce Castle). The £10,000 needed to purchase land was donated by Samuel Montagu 1832-1911 – First Baron Swaythling and Liberal MP for Whitechapel. The land was then transferred to the LCC with the aim to build quality housing and gardens for working class people currently in overcrowded homes in Tower Hamlets - hence the name Tower Gardens. The development would take the shape of an ‘urban garden estate’ as a suburban alternative to the separate garden city satellites The Garden City Association (founded in 1899) advocated. Immediately to the east the Peabody Donation Fund* completed 154 terraced cottages in 1907.

The Tower gardens Estate with the striking component parts of the ladder type first layout and the semicircular Roundway encompassing it. Outside of the Roundway a proliferation of closes, open garden courts and winding streets can be seen. At the heart of the design is a formal axis that widens to accommodate public gardens (P) - now built over with a day centre and a doctor's surgery - and the Tower Gardens (TG) a small neigbourhood park. In the second and third phase many allotment (A) were incorporated. Both the schools (S), the Church (C) and the Union Hall (U) are situated on the edges of the estate in the 1920s.  Topham Square (T) was built over allotments. Also within the Roundway is the Peabody Gardens Estate (PG). To the west the garden suburb connects to earlier Victorian terraced housing. In purple the shops are indicated. The shops on Great Cambridge Road are part of the estate.

Tower Gardens Estate was built in three principal phases, the first occurring between 1901 and 1915; the second phase spanned the period between 1918 and the latter part of the 1920s. The second phase can be roughly divided in a primary building campaign north-east of the first building phase which included the new northern route (the Great Cambridge Road) and a secondary building phase in which the area beyond the Roundway was developed. Inside the Roundway Topham Square was developed as a special project in 1924 to house families coming from poor housing in Shoreditch. Similar projects are to be found north of White Hart Lane. The third phase spans the 1930s.

The area south of Risley Avenue was designed by W. E. Riley mainly as a rectangular grid of terraced houses with two storeys and constructed with red or yellow London stock brickwork; some of these houses are gabled and faced by slate and ceramic tiling in a style that reflects the Arts and Crafts movement. These houses often have pebbledashed upper floors and have been built on a strict layout of parallel streets. Later sections owe less to the Arts and Crafts movement and become progressively more standardised.

The ‘butterfly’ junction of Risley Avenue and Awlfield Avenue is very characteristic of the Garden City esthetic. So are the set back building lines east of the Tower Gardens park and the elaborate corners on the southside of Tower Gardens Road towards Lordship Lane. Similar architecture has been built around Morteyne Road.

Many of the flats and houses north of Risley Avenue were designed by G. Topham Forrest after 1918, and much influenced by Belgian trends; compared with the earlier layout the housing is less dense, initially incorporated four allotment gardens, and is organized around a central axis, namely Waltheof Gardens, which provided for tennis courts and a community club.

Based on the architecture one can easily discern the various building phases of the Tower Gardens Estate. There is an earlier section (the westernmost side of the street ladder) and a more Unwinesk section west of this, that also incorporates the small park. The area within the Roundway is from a single building campaign, except for the east side and some small infills. Later expansion is outside of the Roundway often in interlinked building campaigns where similar architecture is used. The 1930's architecture in the far north is very different from the earlier buildings.

Later expansion of the estate is located outside of the Roundway and consists of informal streets with closes. The parts from the 1920s include a new section of the Roundway, connecting the semicircle with the main axis of the ladder (Risley Av.) and Lordship Lane around the Peabody Gardens Estate. The parallel Marshall Road is also laid out at the same time. On the other side Courtman Road is built together with a part of Gospatrick Road and Stockton Road. Closes are used for a maximum use of space. Also parts of the earlier fabric are filled in at this time. Along Lordship Lane an urban front to the estate is built with long rows of houses. The housing is expanded west of Gospatrick Road in the late 1920s with the formal arrangement of The Crossway and the area around Reynardson Road.

In the early 1930s the housing is expanded northwards. The neighbourhoud east of the Great Cambridge Road is built. At the same time the area around Fenton Road is completed. Both neighbourhoods have little variation in the buildings and a formal layout.

In the second half of the 1930s the housing is extended even firther north across White Hart Lane. West of the Great Cabridge Road we see a formalised variation of Garden City Style terraces and formal row houses arranged around green courtyards - a combination of the English close and the German Gartenhof. To the east parallel streets perpendicular to the throughroad make up what is in effect an extension of the neughbourhood south of White Hart Lane. In 1936 the Lordship Recreation Ground is opened opposite the estate.

The plan of the Tower gardens Estate reveals a shift in spatial thinking. The oldest part being a variation on the Victorian favourite: the grid. This grid was also used for the second building campaign but the buildings are placed according to the Garden City esthetic and a park is introduced. This phase is a precurser to the next big design idea: the Roundway. Originally semicircular with a central axis and fanning streets. Later through traffic is diverted around the Peabody Gardens Estate with a new road section. New streets are less straight and have closes running of them.This style is used for all new housing outside of the Roundway, with the exception of the Gartenhof-inspired section in the far north which incorporates new ideas from Germany and especially Vienna.

* Peabody Trust, originally named the Peabody Donation Fund, is one of the few so-called Model Dwellings Companies still in existence today. Founded in 1862 by London-based American banker George Peabody, it is one of London's oldest and largest housing associations. Model Dwellings were apartment buildings or housing estates constructed, mostly during the Victorian era, along philanthropic lines to provide decent living accommodation for the working class. As such they were forerunners of modern-day municipal housing and a precursor to the Garden City Movement.

Berry Blast

Flowers are the main focus for most people when plants are concerned. The fruits and seeds can be as attractive at times as flowers. Although fruits and seeds are produces all year, the sheer numbers of berries at the end of summer and early autumn is often most spectacular...

There is a great deal of variation in berries. The red ones catch the eye immediately, especially in clusters like these (Viburnum). Brightly coulered fruit husks open up to show the seed in Euonymus, making for a showy contrast. Some berries however are not brightly coulered, like the Snowberry (Symphoricarpos).