3. Lloyd Baker Estate 1832 (John and William Booth) London

A minor detail in this estate introduces a different way of configuring homes, streets and entries. The shift from the serial arrangement of Georgian terraces and their doors to a mirrored arrangement creates both new visual and practical effects with respect to the way we identify individual homes and the housing ensemble. This mirrored arrangement is a common feature of the Victorian terrace but its appearance in the Georgian Lloyd Baker Estate suggests that it had earlier roots. This is likely not the first appearance of this layout, but it is one where its effect is consciously exploited. The layout consists of pairs of units presented as one large home with paired entries in the gap between the pediments forms. The organisation is suggestive of the later semi-detached cottage house. Of note is the way the pediments visually join two units (as if one large house) while their entries link adjacent units. The arrangement brings neighbours into close proximity and increases the possibility of contact between them. A nice consequence of the arrangement is the side-by-side mini-terraces on the first floor above the entries. Whereas the traditional Georgian terrace exhibits a fine balance between individual house and terrace block at Lloyd Baker we have a different play between various readings of individual and paired organisations. An inhabitant might associate their home visually with the ‘house-form’ (pediment and box) while in daily practice exercise interaction with the neighbour from the adjacent ‘house-form’.

Schema

• street (city) ⇒ paired path adjacent to area/garden (boundary) ⇒ steps (ascend) ⇒ landing in recess (threshold) ⇒ door (individual recess)

Unit identity

• Street to door identity is strong; door to unit identity is blurred by treating the gable end as a unified form.

• Black & white photographs courtesy of London Metropolitan Archive (https://collage.cityoflondon.gov.uk).
• Floor plans, elevations and colour photographs from British History Online (http://www.british-history.ac.uk/survey-london/vol47/pp264-297) entry for Lloyd Baker Estate.
• Map courtesy of OS Digimap.

See also:

• Victorian Terrace, c.1850s-1890s (various architects and builders) throughout Britain
• Shaftsbury Park Battersea, 1872 (Robert Austin for the Artizans, Labourers & General Dwellings Co.) London

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