Details
TQ 2688 LYTTELTON ROAD
(North side)
31/27/10377 Belvedere Court, with walls
and gatepiers to south
II
56 flats, in three linked ranges, with walls and gatepiers to front. 1937-8 by Ernst Freud for the Church Estate Commissioners, H Meckhonik contractors. Contrasting brown brick, Flemish bond, with bands and copings of reconstituted stone, mansard attic roofs with brown tilehanging on outer slopes; flat roof to linking and end pavilions, brick stacks. Four storeys. The plan comprises three linked blocks in slightly canted formation; entrances at ends and in centre of blocks, with seven staircases each giving access to two flats on each of the four floors. At rear are garages and stores, with trades' hoists served by their own intercom and dust chutes, off recessed kitchen balconies. Moderne style building, with curved pavilion fronts at ends and subdividing centre. The slope of the site from east to west is exploited by setting down each successive block by a half level so that the cill bands of one block become the window head bands of the next. Plain-glazed Critall metal casement windows throughout in timber surrounds, some with top-hung night vents in the outer lights; windows grouped with horizontal bands on each level by projecting heads and cills. Pavilions have five thee-light windows ground to third floors, separated by circular columns, swept around semi-circular curved ends. Main blocks of 11, 11 and 12 bays, with four and six-light windows on ground to second floor. Entrances have glazed hardwood twin leaf doors, recessed in projecting banded artificial stone surrounds with flat projecting canopy heads above. Third floor treated as attic, with similar windows to lower floors in shallow dormers. Block ends have pavilion ends terminated on line of side entrances, the latte detailed as on the front, but with long landing window above lighting first and second floors, subsidiary windows without banding and four narrow tow-light dormers in attic.
Interiors. Staircase halls with black stone skirtings. Staircase balustrades are solid, thick, with fine timber tops, now with handrail above. Original doors to flats have circular window and chrome finished door furniture. The flat interiors are simple and elegant; fireplaces where they survive are large, with chrome surround, large flat travertine frieze and narrow contrasting mantle and edging. Sliding doors between living room and dining room. Rear retains some balconies with goods hoists and intercoms, with rubbish chutes alongside. Brick walls to front, terminating in round soldier brick gate piers. The walls form a perfect frame to the composition of the block behind. The whole concept was of `truly labour saving flats' in fashionable surroundings, offering a continental lifestyle ideally suited to the many refugees then escaping central Europe for north London. The flats were originally designed for rent, not for sale. The architect Ernst Ludwig Freud (1892-1970) was born in Vienna, and was the younger son of the psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud. Educated at the Vienna Polytechnic, and at a private architecture school under Adolph Loos, Freud lived and practised in Berlin 1921-33, emigrating to England with his father in 1934. He is known for two housing schemes in England, of which this is the best preserved.
Sources
The Builder, 10 February 1939, pp.293-4
Mervyn Miller and A Stuart Gray, Hampstead Garden Suburb, pp.234, 243
London Metropolitan Archives
Listing NGR: TQ2683288916
