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“With elegant proportions and dual-aspect Crittall windows”
This delightful two-bedroom apartment is within Taymount Grange, a 1930s building instantly recognisable by its white stucco façade and striking green windows. It occupies a highly sought-after corner position on the raised ground floor, with dual-aspect views over the garden grounds. Located in leafy Forest Hill, the building is surrounded by its communal gardens, which comprise wide lawns, woodland and fruit tree-filled allotments.
Taymount Grange XI
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History
Taymount Grange was built in 1935 to designs by English architect George Bertram Carter. Carter had studied at Blackheath School of Art between 1911 and 1915 before joining the Royal School of Art. He worked at Edwin Lutyens’ office as a student before setting up his own practice in Clifford’s Inn in 1929. Prior to Taymount Grange, Carter was responsible for two large factory designs in Tottenham and Whitechapel respectively. Carter designed both Taymount Grange and Lichfield Court, Richmond, in 1935.
Taymount Grange sits at the top of Taymount Rise in Forest Hill, on the previous sites of Taymount, a 19th-century house, and Queens Tennis Club. It embodies the 'style moderne' aesthetic that stemmed from the art deco movement during the 1930s. Unlike art deco, style moderne – also known as ‘streamline moderne’ or ‘ocean liner style’ – prioritised clean shapes, long horizontal forms, and a lack of ornamentation.
In his thesis The Servant Problem Solved: Modernist 1930s Residential Blocks, Damian Minto describes the history of Taymount Grange:
“[It] is built on the site of the original Queens tennis club. An important similarity with many modernist schemes was the fact that the existing earlier building (often a detached villa) was to be demolished to make way for the new block of flats. The site’s natural contours made it an ideal location for panoramic views of the London docks and rural edges of suburbia, a feature of which the flats take full advantage. The aimed new tenants were the middle classes – an important similarity with all modernist British residential schemes.
“Facilities available for residents included guestrooms, lounge, restaurant, terrace, landscaped gardens, swimming pool, seven tennis courts and a putting green. Taymount Grange was also fully staffed with everyone from porters to domestic help.”
From the expanses of white-painted stucco to the handsome metal windows and chrome-handled entrance doors, Taymount Grange has retained its unmistakably 1930s details that give it a romantic and modernist appeal.
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