Lutyens Houses Market Report
Richard Page’s property column
Very few significant Lutyens houses have come to the market this year. So, in this column, I have included sales of houses which have been on the market for some time and will do so in future, whenever this is relevant.
15, 28 and 32 Queen Anne’s Gate, London
In 1910, Lutyens moved his office to 17 Queen Anne’s Gate, Westminster. A few years before, he had been busy altering houses in this beautiful early 18th-century street for various clients. This year there has been a hat-trick of notable sales. Firstly, 15 Queen Anne’s Gate, where in 1906 he undertook works for Edward Hudson, lifelong client and founder of Country Life magazine, including incorporating an apse in the dining room. The house is Grade I-listed and had a guide price of £7m. Secondly, 28 Queen Anne’s Gate to which he made alterations for Lord Haldane in 1906, including a panelled library. The house is also Grade I-listed and was for sale with a guide price of £17.95m. Finally, the Grade I-listed 32 Queen Anne’s Gate, to which he made alterations for Lady Allendale in 1907, and which had a guide price of £19.5m.
Ingram Avenue, Hampstead, London
A fascinating house in North London sold in the spring. Reginald McKenna, who was married to Pamela Jekyll, daughter of Herbert Jekyll and niece of Gertrude, became one of Lutyens’s most loyal clients. He commissioned Lutyens to design or rebuild three houses for himself — 36 Smith Square, London (of 1911), Mells Park House, Somerset, which Lutyens rebuilt in 1925, and Halnaker Park, Sussex (1938) as well as significant buildings for Midland Bank of which he was chairman. These comprised its headquarters at No 27 Poultry (of 1924 to 1939, now London hotel and members’ club The Ned); Leadenhall Street (1928); King Street, Manchester designed in 1928 and completed in 1933, and the building at 196 Piccadilly, a homage to Christopher Wren, to the side of St James’s Church (of 1922 to 1923). But what is less well known is that McKenna also commissioned Lutyens to design the facade of a house in Hampstead to give to his son David and new daughter-in-law, Lady Cecilia Keppel, as a wedding present in 1935. Located on Ingram Avenue, the house was a collaboration with John Soutar, who worked on the planning and design of Hampstead Garden Suburb. Lutyens’s Classical elevations are unmistakable with an exterior of grey brick with red brick detailing, a thick cornice under a tiled roof and sash windows. In 2006 the house was completely rebuilt behind the original facade, including a basement extension, the interior having been updated to suit modern family living.
Ingram Avenue is one of the most sought-after streets in this part of northwest London with Hampstead Heath and Kenwood House’s rolling acres nearby. The house, which is Grade II-listed and extends to 9,350 sq ft, sold for £13.75m in April.
Crooksbury
Crooksbury was Lutyens’s first country house commission in 1889 and he revisited it twice. Built firstly in a Neo-Georgian style, it was extended in 1898, then remodelled in 1914 in the vernacular style. The Grade II-listed east wing and principle facade, known as Fig Tree Court, sold in August for £2m.
The Corner and Prospect Cottage, Thursley, Surrey
The Corner, Thursley of 1888, reported on in the Summer 2017 newsletter, was also an early commission. Grade II-listed, it sold for £1.35m in March.
Also in Thursley, Prospect Cottage, which was reported on in the Spring 2018 newsletter, has found a buyer. Originally built as the village institute and now Grade II-listed, it had a guide price of £825,000.
A house with a Lutyens connection has come to the market in West Sussex. Lutyens’s daughter, Barbara, was married to Euan Wallace, Conservative MP from 1922 to 1941. Wallace had sold his Scottish estate and bought Lavington Park, near Petworth, West Sussex in 1936. In 1939, certain that war was looming, he put a house on the estate at Lady Emily’s disposal, while Lutyens remained in London. This was Beechwood, originally an 18th-century rectory. As Mary Lutyens, also Edwin’s daughter, describes in her book, Edwin Lutyens, “Mother took her own servants to Beechwood and for the first year of the war made a home there. Father and Mother wrote to each other every day while she was at Beechwood. He spent an occasional weekend with her and she went up to London occasionally for a night. ‘My darling,’ she wrote, ‘it is such fun when I come up to you, like an improper adventure with a strange man in a strange flat’.” His flat was within his offices in Mansfield Street. The Grade II* listing of Beechwood notes that Lutyens added the porch and altered parts of the interior in 1939. Today, the 6,766-sq ft house incorporates a separate three-bed coach house and three acres of garden. It’s for sale at £3.35m through Savills.
Richard Page is marketing director of Dexters, London’s largest independent estate agent. He has advised on the sale of many Edwin Lutyens houses during his 35-year career. Do please contact him with any Lutyens-related property news at landseer75@hotmail.com
Disclaimer: prices and availability correct at time of going to press.
