Hollamby’s Suburbs - Lambeth's low rise housing
A walk led by Rob Loader
Saturday 24th June 2023, 1430hrs
Starting at Blenheim Gardens estate, London
Meet outside RMO office at 24 Prague Place SW2 5ED
A look at two Lambeth housing schemes from the Hollamby era - Blenheim Gardens and Cressingham Gardens.
Ted Hollamby combined the roles of chief planner and chief architect in the London Borough of Lambeth, from its creation in 1965 until the early 1980s. The London-born son of a policeman, Hollamby was a communist, who ended his career as the planner for the ultra-Thatcherite London Docklands Development Corporation. He drove through huge redevelopment schemes in London, yet also advocated conservation and documentation of the urban fabric, and lived in William Morris' Red House. In the words of his colleague George Finch "Ted was a complex man. But then who isn't?"
Blenheim Gardens and Cressingham Gardens are both low rise schemes, and they are as much a monument to Hollamby’s Lambeth as the more famous towers in the central area of the borough. They show a gentle contextual modernist approach enabled by the 1943/44 Abercrombie Plan’s tapering of population density away from London’s urban core. It is uncertain who designed each scheme, but we think that Cressingham was the work of Charles Atwood.
Conceived well before the better known low-rise housing in Camden, Blenheim Gardens is a pioneer in low-rise, high-density housing, mostly consisting of two-storey terraced dwellings tightly packed in four quadrants arranged around a central set of gardens. The houses are arranged with paired entrances in alternating orientations along the length of the access lanes which dissolves the difference between front and rear while also maintaining passive overlooking and greenery in the public realm. Here we will meet residents and see their homes.
Cressingham Gardens, has become famous over the last decade because of the residents extraordinary fight to stop Lambeth Council from demolishing their much loved homes. The residents will tell us about this struggle. We’ll also hear from architect Ashvin de Vos of Variant Office, who was commissioned by the residents to design an alternative plan for the estate.
The tour is led by Rob Loader - conservation architect and Chair of the Docomomo International Scientific Committee for Technology.
We will provide a study pack of drawings and notes to go with the walk.
Blenheim Gardens, early 1970s
Cressingham Gardens, 2014