Aston Webb House is a

Grade II listed In the United Kingdom, a listed building or listed structure is one that has been placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Historic Environment Scotland in Scotland, in Wales, and the Northern Irel ...

building of historical note located in London. It is the converted General Office of Boord & Son's Distillery, which was built between 1899 and 1901 and designed by Aston Webb, an English architect who designed the principal facade of

Buckingham Palace Buckingham Palace () is a London royal residence and the administrative headquarters of the monarch of the United Kingdom. Located in the City of Westminster, the palace is often at the centre of state occasions and royal hospitality. It ...

and the main building of the Victoria and Albert Museum.

History

Aston Webb House was built in 1899–1901 on land purchased from

Magdalen College, Oxford Magdalen College (, ) is a constituent college of the University of Oxford. It was founded in 1458 by William of Waynflete. Today, it is the fourth wealthiest college, with a financial endowment of £332.1 million as of 2019 and one of the s ...

, and is the sole remnant of a huge industrial complex belonging to Boord & Son, a long-established firm of distillers that was established in 1726. From 1925, it appears the property was gradually occupied by other companies. In 2003 the building was redeveloped to provide "fourteen luxury apartments with a feature staircase set within an existing glazed galleried atrium".

Location

The building is set back from the River Thames across from the City of London (London financial district), between

London Bridge Several bridges named London Bridge have spanned the River Thames between the City of London and Southwark, in central London. The current crossing, which opened to traffic in 1973, is a box girder bridge built from concrete and steel. It r ...

and

Tower Bridge Tower Bridge is a Listed building#Grade I, Grade I listed combined Bascule bridge, bascule and Suspended-deck suspension bridge, suspension bridge in London, built between 1886 and 1894, designed by Horace Jones (architect), Horace Jones and e ...

. It is on the doorstep of the More London development and London Bridge station and is a short walk from landmarks including Borough Market,

Hays Galleria Hay's Galleria is a mixed use building in the London Borough of Southwark situated on the south bank of the River Thames featuring offices, restaurants, shops, and flats. Originally a warehouse and associated wharf (''Hay's Wharf'') for the port ...

, The Shard,

The Tower of London The Tower of London, officially His Majesty's Royal Palace and Fortress of the Tower of London, is a historic castle on the north bank of the River Thames in central London. It lies within the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, which is separa ...

, and

HMS Belfast } HMS ''Belfast'' is a Town-class light cruiser that was built for the Royal Navy. She is now permanently moored as a museum ship on the River Thames in London and is operated by the Imperial War Museum. Construction of ''Belfast'', the fi ...

Style

The building was described by one Edwardian architectural commentator as follows:

In Tooley Street is the distillery of Messrs. Boord & Son, a building faced with picked yellow stocks and stone and red-brick dressings. The offices lie compact between circular turrets bound together by a string-course, becoming a cornice in the interval. These turrets, the entrance doorway, and the quality of the brickwork invest the structure with distinction even among bulky neighbours.

An English Heritage architectural report completed in 1999 notes:

The building is illustrative of Webb's early, pre-1900 career, which was characterised by eclecticism and variety of styles, including 'free Arts & Crafts', 'Jacobean', 'free Tudor', 'Franco-Flemish' and 'François Premier'. This period, which is generally regarded by critics as covering his more original work, saw not only the completion of famous public buildings, but of significant commercial and industrial buildings in London. Executed in high quality yellow stocks with red-brick dressings and liberal use of stone for the entrance frontispiece, cornice and details, it is conceived in a Free Classical style. Distinction resides in the commanding rounded corner tourelles rising from ground to pointed conical slate roofs – a reference to Norman Shaw's New Scotland Yard. The original double-panelled wood doors, segmental-headed tripartite ground-floor windows, and square-headed flush-framed sashes above this, all survive intact.

References

{{coord, 51.50485, -0.08204, format=dms, type:landmark_region:GB, display=title Grade II listed buildings in the London Borough of Southwark