10 Dorchester Drive is a 1935

art deco Art Deco, short for the French ''Arts Décoratifs'', and sometimes just called Deco, is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design, that first appeared in France in the 1910s (just before World War I), and flourished in the Unite ...

style house in

Herne Hill Herne Hill is a district in South London, approximately four miles from Charing Cross and bordered by Brixton, Camberwell, Dulwich, and Tulse Hill. It sits to the north and east of Brockwell Park and straddles the boundary between the boroughs ...

, south London, England, designed by Kemp and Tasker, with the builders Messrs Morrell of

Bromley Bromley is a large town in Greater London, England, within the London Borough of Bromley. It is south-east of Charing Cross, and had an estimated population of 87,889 as of 2011. Originally part of Kent, Bromley became a market town, char ...

. In February 2022, an emergency Building Preservation Notice was put in place, as the building was threatened with imminent demolition.

Background

In 1934, Leslie H. Kemp and Frederick E. Tasker won the

Ideal House Competition The Ideal House Competition was run for many years as part of the Ideal Home Show. Every year designs were invited and the winning schemes would be constructed at Olympia, London, for the Ideal Home Show the following year. The houses were often ...

, to design a home for the Daily Mail

Ideal Home Exhibition The Ideal Home Show (formerly called the Ideal Home Exhibition) is an annual event in London, England, held at Olympia . The show was devised by the ''Daily Mail'' newspaper in 1908 and continued to be run by the ''Daily Mail'' until 2009. It wa ...

. Their design used the moderne branch of the art deco style that was then in vogue. A mock-up "show home" was constructed for the 1935 exhibition, at

Olympia The name Olympia may refer to: Arts and entertainment Film * ''Olympia'' (1938 film), by Leni Riefenstahl, documenting the Berlin-hosted Olympic Games * ''Olympia'' (1998 film), about a Mexican soap opera star who pursues a career as an athlet ...

, London, in a display called "Village of Tomorrow". One feature of the design was that the two downstairs reception rooms could be combined with the hallway, to feature as a

ballroom A ballroom or ballhall is a large room inside a building, the primary purpose of which is holding large formal parties called balls. Traditionally, most balls were held in private residences; many mansions and palaces, especially historic man ...

The house

The five-bedroom house on Dorchester Drive, constructed in 1935–1936 by the speculative builders and twin brothers Cyril and Stanley Morrell (born 1908), is one of only three examples of the design built. The building was constructed with its plan at an angle to the street, rather than the more usual parallel alignment. It retains several of its original features, including the bathroom fittings, iron staircase,

Crittall windows Crittall Windows Ltd is a notable English manufacturer of steel-framed windows, today based in Witham, Essex, close to its historic roots in the county. Its products have been used in thousands of buildings across the United Kingdom, including ...

and a roof terrace.

Building Preservation Notice

The house was placed on the market in September 2021, having been owned by one family for 60 years. Once it was sold, noting the attractiveness of its site to property developers and consequently the likely threat of its demolition, The Twentieth Century Society, the Herne Hill Society, and several individuals campaigned for its preservation. On 24 February 2022, Lambeth Council issued a Building Preservation Notice, preventing alteration or demolition, on pain of criminal prosecution. The order remains in effect for six months, during which time the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (as of February 2022,

Nadine Dorries Nadine Vanessa Dorries (''née'' Bargery, 21 May 1957) is a British politician who served as Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport from 2021 to 2022 under Prime Minister Boris Johnson. A member of the Conservative Party, she ...

) has the option to give the building permanent protection through listing, after taking advice from Historic England.

Residents

The house was the home of psychologist

Hans Eysenck Hans Jürgen Eysenck (; 4 March 1916 – 4 September 1997) was a German-born British psychologist who spent his professional career in Great Britain. He is best remembered for his work on intelligence and personality, although he worked on other ...

from 1960 until his death in 1997, and remained occupied by his widow Sybil until she died in 2020.

Notes

Background

The house

Building Preservation Notice

Residents

Notes

References

Further reading