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Recreation centre and tenants' hall, including baths, gymnasium and nursery

Recreation centre and tenants' hall, including baths, gymnasium and nursery, Goswell Road

Listed on the National Heritage List for England. Search over 400,000 listed places

Overview

Heritage Category:: Listed Building
Grade:: II
List Entry Number:: 1021950
Date first listed:: 04-Dec-1997
List Entry Name:: Recreation centre and tenants' hall, including baths, gymnasium and nursery
Statutory Address:: Recreation centre and tenants' hall, including baths, gymnasium and nursery, Goswell Road

User submitted image — Uploaded by Dominic Martin This photo may not represent the current condition of the site
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Date:: 2007-03-14
Reference:: IOE01/16344/06
Rights:: © Mr Anthony Rau. Source: Historic England Archive

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Official list entry

Heritage Category:: Listed Building
Grade:: II
List Entry Number:: 1021950
Date first listed:: 04-Dec-1997
List Entry Name:: Recreation centre and tenants' hall, including baths, gymnasium and nursery
Statutory Address 1:: Recreation centre and tenants' hall, including baths, gymnasium and nursery, Goswell Road

This List entry helps identify the building designated at this address for its special architectural or historic interest.

Unless the List entry states otherwise, it includes both the structure itself and any object or structure fixed to it (whether inside or outside) as well as any object or structure within the curtilage of the building.

For these purposes, to be included within the curtilage of the building, the object or structure must have formed part of the land since before 1st July 1948.

Understanding list entries

Corrections and minor amendments

This List entry helps identify the building designated at this address for its special architectural or historic interest.

For these purposes, to be included within the curtilage of the building, the object or structure must have formed part of the land since before 1st July 1948.

Understanding list entries

Corrections and minor amendments

Location

Statutory Address:: Recreation centre and tenants' hall, including baths, gymnasium and nursery, Goswell Road

The building or site itself may lie within the boundary of more than one authority.

County:: Greater London Authority
District:: City and County of the City of London (London Borough)
Parish:: Non Civil Parish
National Grid Reference:: TQ 32156 82124

Details

TQ 3282 SW 627-0/3/10173

GOSWELL ROAD (East side) Recreation centre and tenants' hall, including baths, gymnasium and nursery

GV II Recreation centre, including baths and badminton court or gymnasium, with nursery and tenants' hall. Part of the Golden Lane competition design won in 1951, built 1958-62. The competition was won by Geoffry Powell and developed by Chamberlin, Powell and Bon. Ove Arup and Partners, engineers.

Reinforced concrete tenants hall, with steel-framed pool and court, the former with brick and the latter with large areas of glass. Flat asphalt roof. 'L'-shaped plan set in basement level with tenants' hall of one storey. This has grey brick piers and reinforced concrete bush-hammered arches on top, forming arcade pattern, with rooftop children's playground on top, and nursery of grey brick on ground floor over entrance to recreation centre at junction of wings. Two-storey pool hall and badminton court separated on both levels by walks through the building, both with walkways also on either side at upper (ground) level. These of concrete supported on painted posts or pilot is with painted roofs. The tenants' hall glazed between brick piers, with timber windows. Concrete roof elaborately laid out as children's playground, with long bench, walls, and sunken circular playground reached either by slide or gate set below at level of Hatfield House gardens. Swimming pool fully glazed on three sides with metal glazing; these sides all with concrete walkways. The gymnasium and badminton court similarly treated, though most of the glass is now opaque, with timber floor.

SPECIFIC INTEREST The recreation centre is a distinctive element in the design of the Golden Lane. It physically divides the original part of the estate from the later blocks to the north-west, and in style too it falls between Chamberlin, Powell and Bon's early and late styles. In the tenants' hall there is a strong element of the round-arched bush-hammered concrete idiom seen at Crescent House and which was to be developed further at Barbican. The use of different levels is a key element in Chamberlin, Powell and Bon's work, first seen at Golden Lane where it was a natural way of using the deep basements left by the previous buildings on the site and in response to the City's dictates in its competition brief of 1951. The result is a formal grid of courtyards and buildings, in which the circular children's playground is an exception, but one that is none the less formal for that. Every available inch of space has been ordered geometrically for a purpose.

Above all the recreation centre is the chief example at Golden Lane of Chamberlin, Powell and Bon's belief that a housing development should be more than a collection of flats but a real part of the city; it provides welcome facilities for those who live outside the estate as well as for residents. Again, it anticipated the introduction of added facilities (there for the arts) at Barbican.

HISTORY AND ANALYSIS The development and importance of the Golden Lane Estate is explained in the entry for Great Arthur House.

(Corporation of London: The Golden Lane Estate, souvenir brochure: London: 1957-5).

Listing NGR: TQ3212282131

Legacy

The contents of this record have been generated from a legacy data system.

Legacy System number:: 466574
Legacy System:: LBS

Sources

Other
Corporation of London, The Golden Lane Estate souvenir brochure, (1957)

Legal

This building is listed under the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990 as amended for its special architectural or historic interest.