Numbers 50 and 50a Winchester Street are a pair of maisonettes converted from a mid-Victorian house by the architects Roy Stout and Patrick Litchfield, for their own use. What attracted them to the building was the fact that it was a corner house with a side entrance, giving it a front room on the ground floor that did not have the usual entrance passage cut out of it. It also had an area at basement level which continued around the corner on Clarendon Street and which gave access to no less than eight vaulted cellars.

Stout and Litchfield lived in the building with their families, and they also ran their architecture practice from a home-office at the front.

The project was featured in the Architectural Review shortly after its completion in 1970. The following is an excerpt from the magazine:

“The conversion entailed the division of the house into two maisonettes – the ground floor and basement for Patrick Litchfield, and the upper three floors for Roy Stout and his family. Because of the side street it was possible to give each maisonette its own entrance… The mansard was rebuilt with straight walls, and the back extension was raised one floor. The usual cross-wall between the front and back room was replaced by steel beams to open up the living floors and provide complete freedom in the planning of bedrooms and bathrooms.

“The upper maisonette is a series of half levels. The top floor with its sitting room and roof terrace is the parents’ floor, though the sitting room can be closed off for guests. The next half level is a child’s bedroom over part of the back extension. Then comes the main children’s floor over the front part, followed by another roof terrace over the back part. The main living area lies under the children’s floor and is open to the staircase so that one can look up towards the roof terrace or down into the kitchen-dining area.

“The lower maisonette includes a studio on the ground floor and an open living area in a dramatically transformed basement where all the available space has been used to brilliant effect. Large full-height windows reveal the vaults, now painted white and turned into a sort of arcaded garden that becomes the real enclosure of the living room, especially when lit up at night. The rectangular space of the interior is broken up by a diagonal layout of furniture fittings, and by the thin inner wall which is splayed at window reveals to the same 45-degree angle. A low slatted ceiling emphasises the horizontal distances and defines the main volume of the room. A sense of spaciousness and continuity has been achieved throughout both maisonettes by the consistent use of few materials. Thus all the walls are white, and lowered ceilings, which unite spaces that would otherwise be split up by beams or changes of level, are a light olive-green. The basement floor is heather-brown quarry tiles but all upper floors are carpeted in a dark khaki haircord. Joinery fittings in all kitchens and bathrooms are made from iroko and black plastic laminate.”