The development company Span built 30 housing estates between 1948 and 1984. In his book The Spirit of Span Housing, James Strike says: “Span housing was the inspiration of two young men, who, during the 1930s, met as architectural students at the Regent Street Polytechnic. Eric Lyons and Geoffrey Townsend both had a keen interest in modern architecture[…] They believed that there was a market for well-designed houses in carefully designed landscapes for the sort of people who recognised good design when they saw it – and they were right.”

In the case of South Row, Lyons made an application for a three-storey block of 23 flats, incorporating an innovative corner plan with ten maisonettes set over garages in a range to the rear. The scheme was opposed by the LCC's Historic Buildings Sub-Committee and eventually rejected by the Town Planning Committee in 1959. However, in 1963 a general policy for Blackheath Park sought to keep new housing behind existing building lines, and the South Row scheme was approved for it's 'architectural vitality'. Despite the initial resistance to the design, South Row won Lyons a MHLG Housing Design Award when finally completed in 1963.