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It was clearly essential to Lutyens's scheme for the centre of the Suburb, that the tightly knit urban formality of his squares should be approached in the most direct way possible from the unspoilt countryside of the Heath Extension. It is thus more than likely that Lutyens himself played some part in advising on the design of the Great Wall and certainly the dramatic opening in the middle of it. This forms a stepped approach, flanked by walls and verandas, to the bottom of Heathgate, leading straight to the spire of St. Jude's and is typical in its proportions and detailing of the kind of work Lutyens had been doing in the formal gardens of his country houses. The finest of these, Hestercombe near Taunton, had been completed in 1907.
In Heathgate itself the houses are generally of the ripest and most fully developed neo-Georgian, but they tend to be of the safer, more literally imitative kind derived from Ernest Newton rather than the more geometrical kind concentrating on abstract qualities of proportion, which formed Lutyens's later style. Number 1 is by Badcock for Soutar (1924-5) with a pretty shell-hood, number 2 is a large and impressive mansion by H Townshend Morgan (his own), first sketched as early as 1909, while number 4 is another by Soutar (Badcock). More interesting is number 6, by C H B Quennell, with neat pilasters at the corners; number 8 is a more elaborate version with tile-on-edge window dressings, by Braddell and Deane. Numbers 15-17, in a key position facing at right angles down Meadway, is a pair of neo-Georgian houses by Herbert A Welch, 1909, one of the first examples of its style in the Suburb.
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