Wyldes Farm
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Fig 28 - Hampstead Way, near Wellgarth Road, 1997 photo(18k) Above Wellgarth Road there is a slightly less interesting stretch, though number 19 Hampstead Way is elegantly proportioned neo-Georgian (as late as 1933). Morland Close has one and possibly two houses by Bunney and Makins, while Romney Close is by a builder called Quennell (brother of the architect C H B Quennell).

A bend to the right leads to the interesting group of houses surrounding Wyldes Farm which was carefully preserved and used by the Trust and by Parker and Unwin themselves as offices. The farmhouse is T-shaped, the old stem being in white weatherboarding reminiscent of Kent and the Parker and Unwin cross bar being in dark brown brick with an immense roof, with two tiers of dormers inset into it, clearly intended to evoke the qualities of a barn. A tall black weatherboarded bay projects northward.

Next to the farmhouse is Wyldes Close, at the top of which is a particularly fine house, Wyldes Close Corner (originally Boundary House) by Parker and Unwin: brown brick, tall chimneys, steep roof, and very little ornament (Philip Webb's style). Far End is neat neo-Georgian by Evelyn Simmons (his own house). Gates House is another excellent house of the Lutyens school, designed in 1915 by T Lawrence Dale and later altered by the pioneer modern architect, T S Tait (of Sir John Burnet, Tait & Lorne), who lived there. Beneath Dale's tall three-storey bay, towering above the road, is placed a plaster panel by Sir William Reid Dick. On the lower side of Hampstead Way, numbers 3-5 are pleasing red brick cottages by Parker and Unwin, and number 1 is an exquisite, restrained neo-Georgian villa, designed for himself in 1922 by C H James, who had been in the offices of both Parker and Unwin and Sir Edwin Lutyens. Its fine sense of materials, with minimal decoration to doors and windows, and the clipped silhouette of its gables and chimneys show that in the early 'twenties neo-Georgian was still leading towards modern architecture and not away from it.



 
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