14 REFURB & RESTORATION
Ruth Slavid
reports on... Manchester Square
IT IS NOT UNUSUAL FOR ARCHITECTS TO BE CRITICAL OF BUILDERS, BUT WHEN GORDON MONTAGUE, PARTNER AT FEILDEN + MAWSON, SAYS, ‘WITH SOME OF THE BRICKWORK AT THE BACK, YOU LOOK AT IT AND WONDER HOW IT STANDS UP,’ HE IS NOT CRITICISING A CURRENT CONTRACTOR BUT TALKING ABOUT THE ORIGINAL GEORGIAN BUILDERS.
T he poor brickwork was just one of the
problems Feilden + Mawson had to contend with in restoring three Georgian townhouses and four mews buildings in Manchester Square, central London, for the Portman Estate. ‘In Georgian properties, generally the town houses were reasonably well built,’ Montague explained. ‘But often the rear extensions and the mews properties are poor.’ The best bricks were used on the facades to the square, with under-fired or over-burnt bricks being used in less visible places. Some of these were so weak that they had a substantially reduced load bearing capacity.
The average Georgian town house on the Portman Estate provides about 5,000 square feet of office space, and they have become popular with clients who like the cachet of history and the West End address. Feilden + Mawson’s task was to convert all but one of the buildings to office use – and to refurbish the remaining property as a mews house. The town houses are all grade II listed, the mews are unlisted – but since they sit in a
conservation area, the facades have to remain pretty much unchanged.
The townhouses, numbers 10, 11 and 12, were in fairly good condition, with just a little water ingress at the back of number 12. They sit on a corner of the square, with numbers 10 and 11 on one side, and 12 around the corner. All built to a fairly standard Georgian pattern, they had undergone different degrees of alterations and improvements over time. All subsequent alterations were also part of the listing.
Originally they were all built with four storeys and a basement. There were two rooms on each floor, with the first floor the most important, the ‘piano nobile’. There was an open ‘area’ bringing light to the basement at the front of each building, and another at the rear. The basement carried on through this area to a ‘back extension’ of one or two storeys. Originally the houses had no plumbing, so the Victorians added ‘closet wing extensions’, small back extensions to each floor containing lavatories and bringing in water.
The three town houses are on a corner of Manchester Square, one of the finest on London’s Portman estate.
On number 12, Feilden + Mawson has
created a new rear extension, joining it to the existing building with a skylight.
▲
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100