Taymount Grange

Forest Hill and Sydenham mostly remained as undeveloped countryside until the late 19th century. Four principal factors led to the development of the area: (a) the enclosure of common land; (b) the availability of land to developers; (c) the development of the railway network; and (d) the moving of the Crystal Palace to Sydenham in 1852 which would have attracted people to the area. When Sydenham Common was enclosed by an Act of Parliament in 1810, 219 acres of it were awarded to the Earl of Dartmouth (Viscount Lewisham); and his land was sub-divided into smaller plots, some of which were rented to market gardeners, and some of which were developed. Further land development took place in the 1840s, when the Forest Hill Railway Station was opened (and a railway built across part of Sydenham Common). As shown in the 1895 map [Fig. I], a number of large detached houses had been built in the vicinity of the subject site by the end of the 19th century, including one on the subject site itself (“Taymount”). It is unclear when exactly Taymount was built, but local newspaper records suggest that between the late 1860s and the 1890s it was used as a private residential dwelling, and occupied by a Mr and Mrs Bruce Beveridge Todd and their daughter and son. It was later acquired by the Queen’s Tennis Club and used as a clubhouse (until its demolition in 1934). 

The government’s post-WWII “Homes for Heroes” policy in 1919 led to a new initiative undertaken by Lewisham Council, and a number of semi-detached houses with small gardens were built in parts of the borough. However, the areas of Forest Hill and Sydenham on the whole remained the territory of private builders, who capitalised on the selling point of the new services of the Southern Railway electric trains. 

Taymount Grange was built in 1935 (Figs. IV and V). As stated in its local list description, it was designed by the notable architect George Bertram Carter (1896–1986), who trained at the Royal College of Art and was a pupil of Edwin Lutyens from 1919–22 before setting up his own practice in 1929. Bertram Carter also designed Lichfield Court, an Art Deco block of flats in in Richmond-upon-Thames, in 1933. Lichfield Court was statutorily Grade-II listed in 2004. Bertram Carter went on to became a member of the MARS group, of which he was appointed Honorary Treasurer in 1944. 

In his thesis The Servant Problem Solved: Modernist 1930s Residential Blocks, Damian Minto describes the hilltop position of Taymount Grange:

“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.”

Taymount Grange was commissioned by the developer Sir Malerham Perks, intended as serviced accommodation for professional people; and some of the flats included units for the occupants’ own servants. Staff working at the block included porters and domestic help; and facilities available to the occupants of the flats included a dining room/restaurant, a lounge, a terrace, landscaped gardens, a swimming pool, seven tennis courts and a putting green. Within upper middle-class circles, therefore, Taymount Grange would have been considered a fashionable place to live.

It was in the 1930s that flats really started to be constructed as a commercial enterprise in England. The English Heritage Thematic Listing Programme publication, Flats 1880–1939 (by Dr Mervyn Miller, March 1997) comments on different types of flats common to that decade; and the most exclusive type was the “service flats”. These “typically included large numbers of small flats, often one bedroomed, or even bed-sitting rooms, with elaborate suites of public rooms, and even recreational facilities including gymnasia and swimming pools. Such accommodation replicated that available on the larger ocean liners of the period. The more common type of flats would have been large, multi-storey blocks of dwellings, each with two to three bedrooms; and those tended to have a cuboid appearance, but with “modern” detailing, often with Crittall steel windows with a horizontal subdivision, and curved corners giving a streamlined effect”. Such details would often be “highlighted by the use of stone bands or string courses, and sometimes by the use of ornamental brick bonding. Occasionally, staircases would receive special treatment, with the opportunity for sheer glazing, and the use of glass blocks. Ground floors would receive a more monumental treatment, particularly where public rooms or foyers were included, with the use of giant arch motifs, drawn from the seminal continental example of the Karl Marx Hof in Vienna (Karl Ehn, 1926–30)”.

Interestingly, Taymount Grange seems to subscribe (in an architectural sense) to the latter type of blocks of flats, albeit on a smaller scale; but it was built for an exclusive market with services and facilities, as per the former type. The seven-storey Grade-II listed Lichfield Court in Richmond is clearly the latter type, and it seems it was not serviced in the way that Taymount Grange was. 

The original footprint of Taymount Grange remains largely unchanged, although the grounds have been reduced and partially developed. Following the Second World War a number of large houses with extensive grounds in Forest Hill and Sydenham were demolished to make way for housing blocks. By 1951 (Fig VII) residential apartments to the south-west of the site had been built (including McLeod House and Worsley House). From the 1950s onwards the facilities started to be phased out: additional flats were built on the site of the former restaurant; and one of the tennis courts was converted into space for garages. After Lewisham and Deptford Councils merged in 1965 to form the London Borough of Lewisham, further residential development took place, including the two-storey terraces at Forestholme Close (Fig VIII).