Coombe

      This post is not finished it is not edited or checked

Fitzgeorge Avenue 

Turret House. On the site of old Coombe House. It goes through what was the Coombe Manor lawn. Lake still there, fed by seven springs. by F. L. Hird, 1934,

Coombe Manor replaced an earlier a Tudor house. There is remaining Tudor wall in Traps Lane and a Lodge in Coombe Lane West. The House was  demolished in 1933 being bought by Higgs and Hill who then built lots of neo geos

 

Lord Chancellors Walk 

Lord Chancellor’s Walk

Site of Coombe Springs.  Only lodge left.  Small compared to the others.  Royalty and bankers again.

Coomb Springs. In 1946, Coombe Springs was acquired for the Institute under Bennett and by followers of Gurdjieff. It  had been used for research laboratories by the British Coal Utilisation Association since 1943 of which Bennett was the Director. It was eventually donated to Isdris Shah who sold it for housing development,.

Coombe Hill Farm bought by Duke of Cambridge from Earl Spencer in 1839 and let out leases to build big posh houses.  Farmhouse demolished in 1969 for Coombe Hill Junior and Infants School.  Red brick walls of Coombe Warren.  Very posh and built by another banker and friend of royalty etc.  Burnt down in 1870 and rebuilt.  Gladstone hung out there and walked through the grounds.  Sold in 1926 demolished and divided into plots but all the fancy bits are still around if you look - Orangery

Coombe Springs Conduit sluice house in grounds of Coombe Springs.  View from Tamkins.  Freshwater springs locally were collected in brick feeders leading to the sluice house. 3 inch diameter pipes take the water to Hampton Court palace. Dates from the 1520s.

Coombe Conduit. Cardinal Wolsey built a conduit stretching some three and a half miles from Kingston Hill and Coombe Hill to Hampton Court, passing under Kingston and under the Thames. Three of the conduit houses stand – one in the grounds of a house in Lord Chancellor's Walk with both its original buildings, linked by an underground passage. built c 1540, is the most elaborate of the three, consisting of two buildings of equal size connected by an underground passage, 81' 0" long and 5' 4" wide, roofed by a barrel vault, 7' 9" high, rising to nearly 10' 0" and only a few inches below the ground. The higher, east, unit is largely below ground, and unfortunately the upper part was badly damaged in 1943 when a flying bomb exploded and caused a tree to fall on it. The eastern chamber consists of three separate units. The central and original room is 10' 0" x 9' 0" with recesses on three sides, although in the 17th C or early 18th one of the recesses on the north side was pierced to form a doorway. Each chamber has a lead-lined tank, the central one being a deep oval 6' 0" deep. The Lower House (West Chamber) is a single storey brick building, 9' 10" wide and 11' 8" long, its floor being 2' 6" below ground level. The north and south walls have twin recesses; the east and west walls, arches giving respectively onto the tunnel and entrance doorway, the latter being reached by four steps. In the floor is another oval lead cistern. Externally the entrance front is faced with squared, random rubble, very carefully fitted with fine joints but having the appearance of stones re-used from other building the supply of which gave out early, so that above the window the wall continues in Tudor brickwork and is finished with a crow-stepped gable. The side windows are likely to have been inserted in the early 18th Century.

Mount Pleasant areas

Very slowly built up from 1880s

Warren Rise,

Miramonte, 1936-7 by Maxwell Fry. Concrete construction, faced with white plaster set off by blue metal trim. The motifs recall Fry's slightly earlier Sun House, Hampstead, but the larger site here gives greater scope for the play of open and closed elements, of different geometric shapes, and of contrasted window forms.  By the road a separate garage with a chauffeur’s flat above with an open spiral staircase to an upper balcony.  The L-shaped house is further back, via a covered way.  A tall staircase window provides the main interest on the entrance side.  The front has long window bands on two floors and a half-covered roof terrace.  At the end of the front a projecting sunroom with covered balcony over, a typical Fry motif.  Swimming pool.  The horizontal emphasis is echoed by the curving walls that unite the house and garden.  Built for Jerry Brown who was an urban land speculator. Special sliding windows and ceiling heating.

Woodlands Avenue

57; 65; 69 Sunspan houses.  By Wells Coates and Pleydell Bouverie.  Examples of the infiltration of the modern style into English suburbia.  They use the device of a rounded angle to the road with the entrance recessed into it.   Seen as a standard set of plans which could be licensed to builders. This is the bungalow version. 


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Bromley by Bow

South Norwood

River Lea/Bow Creek Canning Town