Hampstead Way, houses facing the Heath

The best approach to the centre of the Suburb via the Great Wall is from the top of Corringham Road where, instead of turning right up to Wyldes, we turn left along Hampstead Way. Almost immediately the larger individual houses of pre-1914 begin. Number 75, dated 1911, is elaborately detailed, with curious oriel windows to the bedrooms, set on the corners as turrets and given separate curved roofs; the front door is framed elaborately in tiles.

Numbers 79-81 are outstandingly good houses in Lutyens's early style and it would be interesting to know who was the architect. The details are simple, but the accents are subtle. The purplish bricks of a particularly attractive shade have their joints slightly raked (a case where re-pointing could be disastrous if done conventionally), and the sense of grand repose given by the deep roof slopes is heightened by the way the architect has made them flow over the two projecting porch bays in the corners and down over the garages at the extreme left and right. At number 83 Michael Bunney has used herringbone patterns in the gables to enliven a plain brick front.

Number 85, with Georgian details and a French mansard roof, was designed in 1908 by Pepler and Allen (Sir George Pepler was a colleague of Unwin's in founding the Town Planning Institute. It was remodelled in 1921 and 1935 by Frank Osler.
Numbers 87-89 are a lively pair designed in 1910 by Matthew Dawson, an excellent disciple of Webb and Lethaby who had worked in the LCC Architect's Department and later taught at Cambridge. He favoured the somewhat outre detailing of E S Prior, the Slade Professor at Cambridge, with unexpected combinations of materials and jagged ornament. This pair of houses is in red brick with grey dressings, with voussoirs and window surrounds in bright red tiles-on-edge. One bedroom window is diamond-shaped, another circular, but the front doors are of Georgian shape.

Number 97 is a good quiet house by Herbert A Welch, with the same Georgian windows, sheer gables and criss-cross chinoiserie woodwork as Parker's at the top of Corringham Road. Numbers 99-101 also by Welch, 1910, are a good pair in a similar red brick manner derived from "early Lutyens". The tile-hung bay window with hipped roof is typical, and also the large diagonally placed chimney. This end of Hampstead Way leads to the important crossroads with Meadway.

The Great Wall

Opposite these houses is first the Heath Extension and then the Great Wall, a masterly derivation by Charles Wade from "early Lutyens". It has been said so often (and rightly) that Unwin was inspired by medieval German towns, particularly Rothenburg in creating this illusion of a "city wall" that it has been overlooked how much its detailed design is derived from Lutyens's garden at Orchards, near Godalming (designed 1897, completed 1900). The big round-arched entrance to the gardens behind the wall, with their radiating voussoirs of tiles-on-edge, are derived directly from those which flank the kitchen garden at Orchards; the perky weather-boarded gazebos are influenced by the Orchards' bothies. Furthermore, Wade must have observed how Lutyens had himself created a "city wall" at Orchards by means of a raised parapet walk giving views over the surrounding countryside. Behind the wall a second line of defence is given by the backs (as carefully considered as the fronts) of the large individual houses, the most expensive in the Older Suburb, which form a varied but continuous solid band of horizontal geometry behind which rises Lutyens's great steeple of St. Jude's.

Heathgate lower end

It was clearly essential to Lutyens's scheme for the centre of the Suburb, that the tightly knit urban formality of his squares should be approached in the most direct way possible from the unspoilt countryside of the Heath Extension. It is thus more than likely that Lutyens himself played some part in advising on the design of the Great Wall and certainly the dramatic opening in the middle of it. This forms a stepped approach, flanked by walls and verandas, to the bottom of Heathgate, leading straight to the spire of St. Jude's and is typical in its proportions and detailing of the kind of work Lutyens had been doing in the formal gardens of his country houses. The finest of these, Hestercombe near Taunton, had been completed in 1907.

In Heathgate itself the houses are generally of the ripest and most fully developed neo-Georgian, but they tend to be of the safer, more literally imitative kind derived from Ernest Newton rather than the more geometrical kind concentrating on abstract qualities of proportion, which formed Lutyens's later style. Number 1 is by Badcock for Soutar (1924-5) with a pretty shell-hood, number 2 is a large and impressive mansion by H Townshend Morgan (his own), first sketched as early as 1909, while number 4 is another by Soutar (Badcock). More interesting is number 6, by C H B Quennell, with neat pilasters at the corners; number 8 is a more elaborate version with tile-on-edge window dressings, by Braddell and Deane. Numbers 15-17, in a key position facing at right angles down Meadway, is a pair of neo-Georgian houses by Herbert A Welch, 1909, one of the first examples of its style in the Suburb.

Linnell Drive and Linnell Close

Immediately behind the Great Wall, leading off Hampstead Way is Linnell Drive, which has some extremely good examples of neo-Georgian. Number 2 was designed in 1924 by C H James (Hennell & James) as the residence of three ladies, all professionally employed and each requiring a separate sitting room. This was a complicated requirement which James clothed in admirably quiet brickwork with relieving arches to the windows and little Adamish paterae in the spandrels.

Number 4 is a handsome house in Lutyens Georgian, with the large areas of brickwork and small windows which he favoured; it was designed by Barry Parker himself in 1924. The next house is something special, designed as early as 1909 by Sir Guy Dawber as one of a pair of houses facing each other (in the end number 8 was built to a different design, albeit a handsome one, again in Lutyens Georgian, and this time by Paul Badcock for Soutar). Dawber was primarily a country house architect, specialising in the Cotswolds, and number 6 is the one example of his work in the Suburb which shows his use of materials at its best, in an extremely clever synthesis of Georgian and Elizabethan ideas. The main entrance with its pediment and swags is Georgian, in plum-coloured brick with good carving to the stone dressings, but the end elevations looking towards the Heath and towards the Suburb are provided with tall thin oriels of Elizabethan derivation.

Number 10 is also an especially good house, by H A Welch, 1914-15. Although its windows are of Georgian shape, it illustrates the Gothic Revival background to most of the Edwardian architects in its asymmetry and in the functional expressiveness of the two tall chimneys rising up the middle of rectangular bay windows. Number 5 is also impressive (by Badcock for Soutar), though with fussy brick piers to the porch.

This group of houses has entrance fronts facing away from the Heath and enclosing one end of Linnell Close, the first major example of neo-Georgian in the Suburb and one of the best. The Builder of 1912 explains that three architects originally prepared designs for different houses, but Michael Bunney (in his capacity as secretary of the Garden Suburb Development Company) succeeded in co-ordinating their efforts and imposing elevations designed by himself. The result is a group of eight neat brick boxes forming a three-sided courtyard possessing a kind of New England simplicity in the admirably sustained puritanism of their detailing, brown brick, with small arched hood moulds to the ground floor windows as the main accent. The stern uniformity is softened by the individuality of the hipped roofs which emphasise each separate house.

Meadway

Both Linnell Close and Hampstead Way open into Meadway, another important approach to the central area, which begins with one of Unwin's "gates", marking the approach to the Suburb from Hoop Lane. Meadway Gate was apparently intended to be more elaborate than it is, as The Builder of 1912 regrets the abandonment of Parker and Unwin's original design for it. Nonetheless there is a handsome symmetrical arrangement of roughcast houses, four on each side, forming a crescent and overlooking a small garden. Through this runs the pedestrian access to Meadway beneath a pergola of the kind familiar from Lutyens's country house gardens.

Meadway itself begins on the left with number 1, another house by Matthew Dawson, an excellent asymmetrical composition with a big brick chimney, an elaborately designed lead gutter placed low down, and also Dawson's usual lintels and voussoirs of pantiles-on-edge. Number 2 opposite is notable for its tall oriel window lighting a two-storey livingroom-cum-studio.

The junction of Meadway and Hampstead Way was intended to be marked by a splendid romantic group of houses design by Baillie Scott. Of these, numbers 6-10 Meadway (and number 22 Hampstead Way) were built, and although later garages have somewhat disturbed the composition, it is still possible to appreciate Baillie Scott's uncanny skill in creating miniature outdoor spaces peculiar to each house, between kitchen wings projecting forward from a main spine of continuous roofs. The windows have his characteristically tender proportions and there is a specially delightful composition towards Linnell Close where the building lies well below the surface of the road.

Opposite is another particularly good informal group in roughcast, numbers 7-13 Meadway, designed by Michael Bunney in his earlier "free style" before he turned to Georgian; number 13 was his own. The houses are joined skilfully by linking walls and garages. At the junction with Heathgate, the only other informal accent is an excellent house of 1911 by Curtis Green, number 20. Before turning to the monumental Banker's Georgian for which he is best remembered, Curtis Green was famous as a draughtsman (on the staff of The Builder), with an understanding of composition and texture almost equal to Lutyens. Number 20 has a thin gable over the entrance, recessed back into the main roof which runs parallel to the road, with weatherboarding at the Heathgate end and big chimneys behind.

Otherwise Heathgate is a prelude to the spire of St. Jude's which closes the vista. Numbers 15-21 Meadway are in the monumental grey-and-red neo-Georgian of Lutyens's central squares and link directly to the Lutyens terraces of the upper part of Heathgate. All this seems to have been freely interpreted from Lutyens's designs, first by Sutcliffe (c 1914-15) and later by Soutar. Number 16 Heathgate, facing down Meadway from the bend, is a clean and competent match for Lutyens, by Soutar's assistant Badcock. It diagonally balances numbers 15-17 by Welch.

Central Square

It was Dame Henrietta who insisted that the "houses for worship and for learning" should stand on the central hill at the apex of the Suburb, although when Lutyens responded to this idea on a monumental scale she argued for a more informal and cosy approach. Both Lutyens and the Dame at first wanted to have shops in the centre of the Suburb, but eventually the Trust decided to exclude them, thus losing much of the potential attraction of the centre. Lutyens's early sketches (in the RIBA Drawings Collection) show clearly that it was his intention from the start to place the two churches, Anglican and Free, where they now stand, with flats as well as houses almost wholly enclosing a square next to each of them.

Central Square was to be enclosed on three sides by the two churches and the Institute, with the western side left as open landscape. This was not merely because Dame Henrietta liked the view of Harrow church there was probably a conscious desire to make this new town a visible counterpart to that old town - but also because to Lutyens and to Unwin it was essential to place natural landscape in direct counterpoint with civilised architecture; the mixing of Man and Nature was the mainspring of the Suburb idea.

To the east is the Institute, with its cupola, almost over civilised, like an off-cut from Williamsburg, and connecting them is a formal avenue, flanked by rows of trees, broken into by a cross-avenue connecting up the steeples of the churches. Lutyens's sketch for the landscaping was, as Dame Henrietta recalls, dashed off in a letter from Marseilles when he was en route for Delhi. At the western end of the Avenue is Lutyens's memorial to the Dame herself, a kind of classical wellhead.

The Churches

The exterior of St. Jude's is one of the masterpieces of European architecture of its time. In Lutyens's first design the church was to have a tall clerestory, and it was the need for economy rather than the Dame's demand that the church should conform more closely to the surrounding domestic architecture, that made him in the end bring the roof down so near to ground level (The British Architect for January, 1910 illustrates both designs, with an illuminating commentary). Enforced humility he avoided most skilfully, letting the roof itself set the monumental scale, with large dormer windows set in a kind of aedicule emphasising the vastness of its slopes.

Against this strong horizontal emphasis, Lutyens set his magnificent steeple, completed three years after the church as a sixtieth birthday present to the Dame from her friends and admirers. As Pevsner remarks, the brick detailing is an extraordinary mixture of Byzantine and Tudor. Clearly Lutyens was inspired by Bentley's campanile at Westminster Cathedral and he also must have had in mind (as Bentley did) the tower of Saint-Front at Perigeux. But the way in which grey brick and red brick is orchestrated in a subtly tapering scale of proportions is entirely Lutyens's own. It is also typical of him that the individual parts of the steeple are so carefully distinguished from each other - for example, a short vertical octagon of brickwork lifts the spire clear of the rest of the tower.

Inside St. Jude's is disappointing, although it is still one of the best churches of its time. There is an unresolved duality between the Byzantine vaulting of the main axes and the over-elaborate timber trusses which spring from the diaphragm arches across the aisles. Undoubtedly much of the quality of Lutyens's proportions was lost in the grossly excessive application of murals by Walter Starmer in 1921-7. The pulpit is by Lutyens, the lectern in similar style by Herbert Welch (1914). The foundation stones of 1910 are by Eric Gill. The Lady chapel to the north-east was built first (1910), but the main chancel apse and the south-east chapel were added only in 1922-3, and the west was not erected until 1934-5.

The Free Church, also by Lutyens, is superficially similar (the same roof and dormers), except that it has a dome, surprisingly Italianate, if not Popish, in appearance. The inside is quite different: a cool white space with tall Tuscan columns, the floor sloping gradually down from the entrance. The east ends of the two churches are also quite different externally. St. Jude's has an extraordinary combination of hipped roofs. One over the chancel is raised slightly, like a sun visor, over a little window reminiscent of that at Lutyens's Heathcote, Ilkley; below it is the tall Crucifixion designed by him as the 1914-18 war memorial. The Free Church by contrast has an ingenious drawing board elevation building up from a low pediment over the vestries.

The vicarage and the manse are identical and U-shaped, Lutyens cleverly matching up the simple life of Nonconformity with the more luxurious Anglican requirements by dividing the manse into two separate houses which appear from the outside as one. The positions of vicarage and manse now seem curious, slightly askew from the axis of each church, with their U-shaped entrance fronts facing outwards. The explanation is that opposite each of them was to be an answering U-shaped block of flats forming a gateway to North and South Square.

Similarly a gateway at the west end of each church was never built. This was to consist in each case of a church hall set across the gap between the church and the houses, with wrought iron gates at each end. The church halls were never built in their intended positions, partly because the sites were too small, partly because the residents of the houses in North and South Squares did not wish to have the value of their property diminished by the presence of public entertainment on their doorstep, and, in the case of St. Jude's, partly because it was felt that a hall would be better sited, for mission purposes, in the poorer part of the parish.

North Square

The fact was that the social character of the two residential squares was not what was originally intended. The Co-Partnership brochures of c 1908-9 clearly illustrate Lutyens's designs for blocks of fiats, with balustraded balconies opening out from the communal staircases. Some time in 1909 it was decided that flats would not pay and instead it was decided to build large houses for the well-off.

Numbers 1-8 North Square were completed entirely to Lutyens's design, forming a splendid composition of grey and red brick with a lively rhythm of projecting bays with balustraded parapets, with a giant stone arch penetrating the corner house as the focal point. It is curious that the houses were set slightly below the level of the square, so that they are much more dominant in height from their private gardens than from the public pavement. Numbers 9-12 and number 15 were completed by G L Sutcliffe in 1914 after Lutyens had parted company with the Co-Partnership directors. Number 9 has the date 1920, because the house stood empty until after the War. It is interesting to notice that Sutcliffe has diminished the size of Lutyens's great chimneys. Set back into the trees of Big Wood at the end of this terrace is the Friends' Meeting House, a pleasant piece of seventeenth century Dissenter Revival by Fred Rowntree (1913), in red brick with a deep plaster coving.

Erskine Hill south end

In Erskine Hill, sloping down northwards opposite the Free Church transept (there is a fine view of the Free Church dome up the road), Lutyens himself designed only the houses on the west side. These are one of his happiest Classical compositions, illustrating in Georgian terms the method of emphasising the slope of a hillside, by placing the tallest buildings at the lowest end, which he had learnt as a child from the picturesque farmhouses illustrated in Randolph Caldecott's children's books. The dominant white cornice is used first as a string course above the ground floor windows, then (as the ground falls away) as the cill for the first floor windows and finally as the main cornice above the first floor windows - binding the houses together at a single level, and thus emphasising the geometry of the angle at which the ground slopes.

Numbers 1-7 are a particularly attractive composition, the four houses giving the illusion of three (Lutyens wanted to scale up the proportions as much as possible), the central pair being gathered under a steep pavilion roof with a central chimney, with artful recessions on either side. The complexity of this was probably too much for Co-Partnership budgets, as Sutcliffe in numbers 2-8 opposite resorted to a more conventional U-shaped arrangement. Sutcliffe also reduced the scale of the chimneys and altered various details on windows and doors. The lowest house on each side is detached, with a large polygonal bay turning the corner.

Unfortunately Lutyens's houses were rather too expensive and, in the course of his enormous practice, he found it difficult to produce his designs as quickly as Co-partnership Tenants required, particularly as they kept on insisting on amendments to them - and having made so many amendments he was particularly offended at the lack of enthusiasm for their convenience when completed.

South Square

In South Square, very little of Lutyens's design survives at all. Numbers 1-3, probably by Sutcliffe, having bay windows quite different from anything Lutyens would have designed. Number 1 was the Dame's own house into which she moved in 1915, her husband having died two years earlier. Numbers 3-18 used the Lutyens formula of grey brick with red dressings but with the facade ironed out into a straight line.

Heathgate top end

The top end of Heathgate succeeds in maintaining the urbanity of Erskine Hill, even if Sutcliffe was able to dilute the details in carrying out Lutyens's design (c 1914-15). There is a handsome terrace of four houses on each side, followed by an individual house. To the south-east number 28 Heathgate and numbers 19-24 South Square begin a process of change with a series of detached neo-Georgian villas by C G Butler (c 1930) set back behind a slip road.

The Institute (now Henrietta Barnett School)

Although the Institute was intended by Lutyens to be a continuous urban composition filling the east side of Central Square, it unfortunately took long to grow. A small part was completed in 1909, and the rest of the north wing following about two years later; but then, in order to accommodate the Henrietta Barnett school, Lutyens was forced, in place of his original design, to duplicate this wing to the south in 1924(?). Finally, years later, he joined the two wings with the tall central block with a pavilion roof and cupola which forms the third main accent of the Suburb's centre. He also sketched two further wings which would complete the Central Square frontage on each side as far as Northway and Southway.

As these were never built, there is now an ugly gap on each side of the Institute (now replaced by two new wings for the school), and there is also a large indeterminate slope of ground between the back of the Institute and the Henrietta Barnett Junior School, designed in Soutar's office by W T Powell in the bland official Georgian of the 'thirties, with a symmetrical frontage to Bigwood Road.

Bigwood Road, Hurst and Ruskin Closes

To the south-east of the central squares there is an effective contrast of informal closes. Southway begins with some early houses, the most attractive being number 10, a gem of small scale dignity by Geoffrey Lucas, a square block with a canted studio window to the ground floor and a big central chimney. Bigwood Road has some attractive mansard-roofed houses of 1909 by Michael Bunney (numbers 6-8, 12-14); he also did the neat white gabled grouping of number 17 with number 18 Southway (number 18 Bigwood Road is similar, but tile-hung).

Hurst Close leads back towards South Square. It is flanked by two small Curtis Green houses (numbers 9 and 11 Bigwood Road) and consists otherwise of smaller cottages by Parker and Unwin, T M Wilson and H T Morgan. At the corner of Meadway there are some good austere houses with white gables by S B K Caulfield (numbers 1-3 Bigwood Road and numbers 45-47 Meadway). Numbers 41-43 Meadway are a nice pair by T M Wilson combining roughcast walls and thin oriels in the centre with rusticated neo-Georgian brick flanks (fine chimneys).

Ruskin Close is a twin to Hurst Close and has simple white houses by C M Crickmer, leading to a good pair by Dawber with tall half-hipped gables. These two closes have a particularly good relationship between houses and trees and between enclosure and openness, forming a total environment which is superior to any of the individual elements.

Turner Close and Turner Drive

The other side of Meadway was gradually built up with grander neo-Georgian houses towards the Heath Extension. Turner Close illustrates the change of architectural values which was apparent after the sharp break of the Great War. Instead of the co-ordination of Bunney's Linnell Close these neo-Georgian houses try to look slightly different from each other, illustrating the tendencies of competition between neighbours in suburbs. Those that are by Soutar's assistant, Badcock, stand out from the rest (numbers 1-3, and 7-9). Number 12 by C H B Quennell (1912) also stands out because of its scholarly detailing, with a central pediment and rusticated quoins.

At the Heath end, in Turner Drive, there is a splendid row of houses, the two best being by Herbert Welch, Devon House (for himself) and The Fourth House. They have central pediments with brickwork in an attractively variegated mixture with red dressings. Fairport is one of Soutar's best houses, his own in fact, c 1922, with a fat Tuscan porch added later to the projecting centre piece with three segment-headed windows. Red Lodge opposite (dated 1912) is, by contrast, picturesque and tile-hung with a first floor oriel between two big chimneys, with gables sloping to left and right; the architect was T M Wilson.

Eastwards down Turner Drive there are more good Georgian houses, particularly number 3, another of Badcock's designs in Soutar's office. It is in purple brick, with a big arched window on the first floor and very small brick slits with sloping cills elsewhere. Number 1 opposite is of 1920 by E Turner Powell, still displaying the best qualities of pre-war tile-hanging in its three small gables, that to the left sloping down to a veranda (now filled in).

Meadway Close

Where Turner Drive meets the top of Meadway Close, there are three particularly grand neo-Georgian houses. Heath House, by Soutar (probably designed by W T Powell), has three arches in bright red brick to the entrance and an impressive coved cornice to the roof. Number 11 Constable Close was designed in Soutar's office by Badcock, with bright red pilasters and projecting wings, the garden side having a round-arched loggia; curiously, the client was an architect, Henry Tanner Jnr. who designed most of the rebuilt Regent Street - he decided he knew too little about domestic architecture to do his own house. Number 1 Meadway Close (1910) is by Arnold Mitchell, an excellent country house architect of the Lutyens generation who lived at Harrow and here produced an astringent contrast between purple brick walls and bright red panelled pilasters, the Georgian doorcase being picked out in white. Number 3 Meadway Close (The Ship - there is a polished copper ship on the front door) was designed for himself in 1909 by the architect J M W Halley, who was killed in 1918; he was a distinguished architectural historian and contributor to The Architectural Review. Numbers 5-7 are a pleasant pair with sloping gables by B H Webb and H S East (1914). The other houses in Meadway Close are a local builder's version of Parker and Unwin's dark brick style (with brick mullions to the windows) - there are similar houses on the north side of Constable Close.

Constable Close and Meadway Court

The Heath side of Constable Close has individual houses, the best being number 7, a rare example of neo-Georgian by Baillie Scott, with surprisingly clipped details foreshadowing the Modern Movement, and number 1, a tall red brick house in early Lutyens manner with a large studio window to the first floor. It was designed for himself in 1915 by the architect E J Head, who later emigrated to India. The studio inside is a 20 ft cube with an open roof. Number 2 is in a French-influenced Classicism reminiscent of Sir Reginald Blomfield; the architects were S N Cooke and E C Davies (Cooke was later a leading architect in Birmingham). Number 5 is by F J Watson Hart.

There are simpler houses round the corner in Wildwood Road, the best being number 35, by Crickmer, 1913, with a Lutyens-derived staircase bay given a continuous clerestory under a hipped roof. Round the corner again, on the south side of Meadway, there is an interesting group of terrace houses. Numbers 36-42 are by Matthew Dawson (one of them for himself), with his usual lively mixture of materials, dark brick walls and brighter pantiles being contrasted with a series of ceramic panels set in the spandrels of the six arches on the ground floor of each pair. Numbers 44-46 (architect unknown) are also excellent, with bold three-quarter arches to the entrance loggias and staircase bays inset into the angles.

Opposite stands Meadway Court, a very large block of flats by G L Sutcliffe, which was admired for its appearance by Dame Henrietta, particularly for its use of stone dressings for the elaborate Tudor windows.

Hill Close

From the junction with Meadway, Hampstead Way continues to run northwards along the western slope of the central hill. Hill Close provides pedestrian access to South Square and is a particularly attractive group of houses on the hillside. Number 36 Hampstead Way, with its half-hipped roof, is by Dawber, 2 Hill Close is a small asymmetrical cottage designed for himself by F J Watson Hart, numbers 4-6 are an admirably restrained white pair by Fred Rowntree (a Quaker architect showing the Quaker virtues), while numbers 3-5 opposite are a close derivation from Voysey by Michael Bunney. Number 40 Hampstead Way is a delightful L-shaped house, tall and upstanding, designed in 1909 by T Lawrence Dale (who afterwards practised in Oxford). It neatly anchors the angle of the junction between Hampstead Way and Willifield Way, with plaster pargetting to the central gable.

Willifield Way south end

Number 4 Willifield Way is a very successful dark brick house with brick mullions and carefully panelled window surrounds. It was designed as late as c 1924 by Paul Badcock in Soutar's office; the client was a painter, hence the big studio window at the back. Number 6 (Byways) is a half-timbered aberration. Opposite, Willifield Way begins with number 5 (Pantiles), T M Wilson's second house for himself (1910). It is simple yet exotic in its adoption of whitewashed brick (slightly Spanish), with a red brick arched hood mould to the staircase window. Number 7, by H Merriman (1909) is also an excellent cottage, L-shaped with steeply sloping gables and arch-panelled chimneys.

There follows on the west side of the road an admirably sustained group of houses by Geoffrey Lucas, mostly built in 1908. Number 9-11 and 21-23 have rectangular bays with big three-sided windows on both floors. Numbers 13-19 have polygonal bays under overhanging triangular gables like those in Lucas Square (see below), while numbers 25-37 form a delightful crescent of paired houses linked with walls and archways (65). This crescent is at level below the road, forming an oasis of lawns and trees, while at the same time relating coherently to the road. Lucas has succeeded in eliminating all the conventional fences and walls - the ground drops directly away from the pavement. The houses are in Lucas's usual combination of creamy roughcast and strongly emphasised red brick quoins, with strongly accented bay windows under overhanging gables.

Opposite there is a much quieter backcloth of white plastered cottages. Numbers 20-22 by Bunney are similar to those in Bigwood Road, while numbers 24-42 built in 1908 are typical of the early work of Crickmer - commonplace in detail, with lean-to verandas and ground floor bay windows, but very effective as a total composition. Crickmer's finest work in the Suburb follows a few yards further on in the group of houses filling the two eastern quarters of the crossroads between Willifield Way and Temple Fortune Hill. Number 44 was designed for himself by John Fox Jones (c 1909).

Hampstead Way north end

On the west side of Hampstead Way opposite the junction with Willifield Way there is an important series of terraced cottages by several leading architects. Numbers 117-119, the only one built of two pairs designed in 1909 by W H Ward, a former Lutyens assistant, have smooth white walls and clipped gables, even the brick chimneys being severely geometrical. Numbers 121-123 are much cosier, by P Morley Horder (brother of the famous doctor), whose tile-hung gables derive from his early training in the office of George Devey. He was a prolific country house architect of great ability, mainly in a Home Counties vernacular. Numbers 125-127 are by Lucas, designed as an off cut from Lucas square (see below). Numbers 135-141 are a remarkable quartet by W Curtis Green, showing how far the English free-style architects went towards the Modern Movement. The four blocky white wings with their minimally detailed flush windows are relieved only by a curious "brushed" texture to the plaster-work. Numbers 143-149 are also a good quartet with tall half-hipped gables in white plaster, very much in Dawber's style and quite possibly by him. Numbers 167-169 are a pair of 1909 by J Gordon Allen, with a timber loggia between bay windows.

Opposite, number 42 is a good small house by Geoffry Lucas with his usual bay windows and red brick dressings, while number 46 is an excellent asymmetrical house (originally called Wayside), designed for himself by T M Wilson, 1908. A big sloping gable with a porthole window is balanced against a tall two-storey bay window, the smooth white plaster being pitted with small holes and ornamented by a plaque of a flower vase. Numbers 56-58 are by Gordon Allen (1908). On the same side of Hampstead Way the varied frontage of individual cottages is suddenly transformed by two big three-sided courtyards. Numbers 60-82 Lucas Square, named after its architect, is an excellent composition of terraces flanked towards Hampstead Way by two individual houses. The accents are, unusually for the Suburb, vertical, in the form of narrow two-storey bay windows under overhanging gables. The creamy roughcast of the walls is constantly enlivened by red brick quoins. The central gable of brick is curiously pinched, and at times the detailing is almost restless. Numbers 84-108, originally known as Litchfield Square (after Frederick Litchfield, the secretary of Second Hampstead Tenants Limited), is a restful contrast, in that it was designed by Parker and Unwin almost wholly in red brick, with accents kept to a minimum.

Wild Hatch

Parallel with Hampstead Way runs Temple Fortune Lane, along the western boundary of the Suburb. Beyond Meadway Gate this continues in the cul-de-sac of Wild Hatch next to the gardens of the crematorium (designed by Lutyen's master, Sir Ernest George, in 1907). The Wild Hatch houses are a lively group, probably all by T M Wilson. Numbers 2-6 are certainly his, corresponding closely with one of the designs in the 1909 book, a good asymmetrical composition of roughcast and red brick with big chimneys; numbers 3 and 4 are dated 1911 and 1909 respectively.

Number 7 is in the manner of Wilson's own house in Willifield Way with the same round-arched hoodmould to the staircase window. Here there is also an excellent composition of the end facing the road, the weatherboarded gable being flanked by two symmetrical projections, one of them an annexe to the dining room and the other a built-in garage, one of the first in the Suburb (1911). Another garage, designed by Frank Osler in 1928 and belonging to 85 Hampstead Way, has a brick arch and a cupola which effectively closes the cul-de-sac. From it an impressive brick wall extends along the pathway which leads from Wild Hatch through to Hampstead Way.

Temple Fortune Lane

North of Meadway Gate, Temple Fortune Lane begins with number 2, a small white-plastered house with weatherboarded gables and a prominent ship weather vane, by that rare architect C Harrison Townsend, who had been responsible for one of the Barnetts' other pioneering enterprises, the Whitechapel Art Gallery (1896-1901). Numbers 12-32 form a recessed square, similar to those in Hampstead Way except that there is an irregular mixture of terraces, pairs of houses and individual houses. Numbers 34-36 are a very good pair by Arnold Mitchell, built in 1908, with bands of different coloured brick and neat hipped porches. Numbers 38-48 are a crescent by Sir Guy Dawber built in 1908, in his white plaster manner, with tall half-hipped gables to the houses next to the Lane.

Numbers 50-54 are an interesting trio by Parker and Unwin (1909), the third house being almost detached from the other two, and set on a different axis with a gabled arch in the angle. The remaining houses in Temple Fortune Lane are of the roughcast cottage type, better than those in Hampstead Way, particularly numbers 88-94, which are pleasantly set back behind old trees. Numbers 56-68 are set back in a crescent. This end of the road, with its gradual change in scale of materials from the large house to the small cottage, effectively links the centre of the Suburb to the artisan north end.