The Golden Lane Estate is the northernmost part of the City of London. Architecturally it was way ahead of its time, which was the 1950s, when council estates didn't tend to look like this.
It's here because much of the City was destroyed in the Blitz, particularly northwest of the Guildhall. The Corporation of London became concerned with depopulation as business and commerce started to return and rebuild, so looked just beyond their boundaries for somewhere hundreds of key workers could live.
In 1951 the Corporation purchased land around Goswell Road and Golden Lane and announced a competition to design a housing estate primarily for single people and couples who had key jobs in the city, such as caretakers, nurses and policemen. This competition was won by Geoffrey Powell, a lecturer of architecture at the Kingston School of Art in 1952. He invited his colleagues Christoph Bon and Joseph Chamberlin to collaborate on a detailed design for the Golden Lane Estate. This was finalised in 1952 and later revised for an enlarged site area from 1954 after building began the year previously. The Golden Lane Estate was completed in 1962 as a landmark early modern housing scheme.
[Barbican and Golden Lane Conservation Area Draft Supplementary Planning Document, May 2021]
Powell concentrated on layout, landscape and the community centre, Chamberlin on the central tower and Bon on the maisonette blocks. If you recognise the names it's because this trio went on to design the much larger Barbican Estate nextdoor, a concrete paradise that would have gone unbuilt had Golden Lane not been deemed a success.
The intention was to create a densely packed residential site with 200 persons to the acre with a high number of small residential flats and a variety of community amenities. On completion, the number of residential units totalled 559 flats and maisonettes, community centre, nursery and playground, swimming pool, badminton court (now a tennis court), gardens, open spaces, a line of shops and a pub.
[Barbican and Golden Lane Conservation Area Draft Supplementary Planning Document, May 2021]
It's much easier to navigate than the Barbican because circulation is mostly at ground level, with long open walkways, spacious courts and substantial shared gardens. All the garages are tucked away beneath the main piazza while the leisure facilities are also at a lowerlevel, which means you can look down on residents in the swimming pool as you walk by. Also there's a decent map.
This scheme pioneered new philosophies of Modernist Planning, high rise density, formal prescriptive urban design to minute detail and the removal of roads in preference for a new kind of urban network. Powell claimed that ‘there is no attempt at the informal in these courts. We regard the whole scheme as urban. We have no desire to make the project look like a garden suburb.'
[Barbican and Golden Lane Conservation Area Draft Supplementary Planning Document, May 2021]
Originally the estate was in the borough of Islington but a boundary realignment in the 1990s, strongly supported by residents, saw Golden Lane transferred to the City. It's obligatory at this point to mention that on this date Goswell Road became the only 'road' in the City of London, otherwise someone always chirps up in the comments and mentions it anyway.
The texture and colour of the facing materials were key aspects of the design of Golden Lane. Pick-hammered concrete and expressed loadbearing brick crosswalls gave depth to the elevations while the use of opaque glass cladding created interest through colour. As the architects’ ideas developed, the design of the blocks became more robust and textured with bush-hammered concrete that was later used on the Barbican Estate.
[Barbican and Golden Lane Conservation Area Draft Supplementary Planning Document, May 2021]
The blocks are colourful and regular, slotted in to create maximum intervening space. Most are named after dignitaries, in a couple of cases Lord Mayors, my favourite being Cuthbert Harrowing House (named after a Chairman of the Public Health Committee). Externally they've been well looked after, as you'd expect with the City of London as the landlord, although tenants don't always have good things to say about heating, kitchen and bathroom upgrades.
The original design for Golden Lane Estate was dominated by a block eleven storeys high with twelve low blocks and a community centre arranged around a series of courts. The design was modified over the 9 years it took to build from the competition entry submission in 1952 due to the original site being extended and, in 1955, with the increase in height of the tallest proposed block, Great Arthur House. The changes resulted in a much less symmetrical scheme and an evolution of design aesthetic.
[Barbican and Golden Lane Conservation Area Draft Supplementary Planning Document, May 2021]
At time of construction Great Arthur House was the tallest residential building in Britain and it remains the estate's dominant centrepiece. In part that's due to its layered yellowness - the original hue - but also because of the curved oversailing roof feature shielding the water tanks, which Ian Nairn likened to 'a concrete aeroplane'. All 120 flats have just one bedroom, but residents can always escape to the split level water garden on the roof.
Crescent House, the final building to be constructed, marks a departure from the earlier curtain wall blocks of the 1950s. and the ideas explored in the design of this building had a significant impact on the development of the Barbican Estate.
[Barbican and Golden Lane Conservation Area Draft Supplementary Planning Document, May 2021]
Tucked underneath Crescent House, running from The Shakespeare pub to the People's Choice cafe, is a double-sided parade of shops. It's a bit sparse on the inward-facing side, now just a drycleaners and Cliffords hairdressers, but the concave flank boasts a barber, grocer, off licence, bagel shop, newsagent and pharmacy. It's the ordinariest retail selection anywhere in the City, even if the sweep of listed pillars out front raises the tone somewhat.
The post-war, modernist character of the Estate has survived well. Small-scale enhancements to urban greening, lighting and wayfinding could all help to enhance the Estate yet further, alongside ongoing projects of repair and maintenance of the fabric. Additionally, the reversal of later alterations could be beneficial where this would better reveal and enhance the original architectural character of the Estate.
[Barbican and Golden Lane Conservation Area Draft Supplementary Planning Document, May 2021]
The contrast with the Barbican isn't just architectural, it's social. Residents here are less likely to be well-off. Cheery unkempt children play on balconies. St George's flags dangle out of a handful of windows. The community centre feels welcoming rather than a fortress. I walked round with a smiling sense that living here could be technically attainable. As 1950s council housing goes, the Golden Lane Estate was (and still is) a cohesive triumph. [12 photos]
