Constable Close and Meadway Court
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The Heath side of Constable Close has individual houses, the best being number 7, a rare example of neo-Georgian by Baillie Scott, with surprisingly clipped details foreshadowing the Modern Movement, and number 1, a tall red brick house in early Lutyens manner with a large studio window to the first floor. It was designed for himself in 1915 by the architect E J Head, who later emigrated to India. The studio inside is a 20 ft cube with an open roof. Number 2 is in a French-influenced Classicism reminiscent of Sir Reginald Blomfield; the architects were S N Cooke and E C Davies (Cooke was later a leading architect in Birmingham). Number 5 is by F J Watson Hart.

There are simpler houses round the corner in Wildwood Road, the best being number 35, by Crickmer, 1913, with a Lutyens-derived staircase bay given a continuous clerestory under a hipped roof. Round the corner again, on the south side of Meadway, there is an interesting group of terrace houses. Numbers 36-42 are by Matthew Dawson (one of them for himself), with his usual lively mixture of materials, dark brick walls and brighter pantiles being contrasted with a series of ceramic panels set in the spandrels of the six arches on the ground floor of each pair. Numbers 44-46 (architect unknown) are also excellent, with bold three-quarter arches to the entrance loggias and staircase bays inset into the angles.

Opposite stands Meadway Court, a very large block of flats by G L Sutcliffe, which was admired for its appearance by Dame Henrietta, particularly for its use of stone dressings for the elaborate Tudor windows.



 
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