Community Centre and Surround To Attached Pond, Golden Lane Estate Designed Landscape, City of London, London, EC1Y (Grade II)

TQ 3282 SW 627-0/3/10172

FANN STREET (east side) Community Centre and surround to attached pond

GV II Community centre, with pool to rear. Design won in competition in 1952, built to revised designs 1955-57. The competition, which included the community centre, won by Geoffry Powell, architects for built scheme Chamberlin, Powell and Bon. Ove Arup and Partners, engineers. Grey brick walls, part load-bearing, and reinforced concrete.

Flat roof. Building entered from ground floor, which is the upper storey. Lower floor set in basement courtyard, part sunken, overlooking pool and formal garden. Ground floor hall, with raised roof over stage, dressing rooms and kitchen. Lower floor has club room and games floor. Timber windows, full height to front entrance hall in set-back screen. Double timber doors with tile cladding to their side. Clerestory glazing to sides, and to right-hand half of garden front, above tile cladding. The rest of the exposed one and a half storeys fully glazed. Fire exits to far side lead to walkways on both levels.

Simple interiors, the main hall and clubrooms with timber floors. Stone surrounds to pool, with stepping stones added 1957-58.

The community centre was an integral part of the competition brief, and its use of two levels and the treatment of the pool surround and paved area to its rear well demonstrate Chamberlin, Powell and Bon’s aesthetic.

HISTORY AND ANALYSIS The development and importance of the Golden Lane Estate is explained in the entry for Great Arthur House.

(City of London Corporation Record Office: Records of the competition, 1951-2. Surviving drawings.; Derek Bean: The Golden Lane Competition, Bartlett School MSc Thesis: -1987; Architectural Review: June 1957: 415-26) .