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You are here: Home / The Suburb / The Exhibition that saved Bedford Park

The Exhibition that saved Bedford Park

The consequences

Restorations

Although some adventurous individuals had already begun to buy and restore run-down, and usually multi-occupied, houses before the 1967 listing, the process was much encouraged by it. The restrictions imposed by listing, together with advice and guidance by the Bedford Park Society, which produced a number of booklets about building details, resulted, over a long period which is still not completed, in many houses being restored, possibly in some cases to a better condition, particularly as regards foundations, than when they had been built.

Apart from repairs and replacements of main structural elements, especially roofs, in many cases details which had been altered were restored to their original designs. Missing door hoods were replaced, and fences restored. Indeed, the Shaw-designed Bedford Park Fence, with its swan-neck ends, became very popular, and there are probably more of them now than when the suburb was first built.

37 Woodstock Road photographed in late 2016. Writing in 1985, the then owner said “When we purchased the house in 1981, it was in an appalling condition, both interior and exterior. With the help of local council grants, we have slowly brought it back to its former glory…” [D W Budworth]
11 Bedford Road photographed in late 2016. Writing in 1987, the then owner said “I bought the freehold of 11 Bedford Road, W4 in 1964. The house was in appalling condition but - instead of demolishing it and developing it as some buyers in Bedford Park did at the time - I spent a considerable amount of money restoring it.” [D W Budworth]
As shown above: 15 Priory Avenue: altered gable restored to original shape. [D W Budworth]
50 Woodstock Road: glazing bars replaced. (See Original Exhibition Panel 7: 14/8 for effect of removing glazing bars.) [D W Budworth]
16 Addison Grove with replacement timber balustrade. (See Original Exhibition Panel 7: 14/5 for photograph of house with steel tube balustrade.) [D W Budworth]
2 Rupert Road painted white. [Bedford Park Society Greeves Archive]
2 Rupert Road with brickwork cleaned and restored in 2010. (This was not an example to which Greeves drew specific attention.) [D W Budworth]
6 Woodstock Road rendered, and 8 Woodstock Road tile-hung in 2006. (Greeves did not draw attention to these specific examples, but did include a rendered house in his examples of deleterious alterations.) [D W Budworth]
6 and 8 Woodstock Road with original brickwork revealed after restoration in 2010. Some repairs were required, but the original brickwork had survived well. [D W Budworth]

Major extensions to existing buildings

Two controversial extensions to existing buildings with extensive grounds took place after planning applications which went to appeal. In the late 1990s Orchard House School at 16 Newton Grove was eventually allowed to replace an unsightly collection of ancillary huts by an extension designed to harmonise with the existing building, which itself had been extensively altered during its lifetime.

16 Newton Grove: Orchard House School with ancillary huts. [Bedford Park Society Greeves Archive]
16 Newton Grove with two-storey extension in sympathetic style in place of huts. [D W Budworth]

The owner of 1 Woodstock Road (The Yews), which had become derelict, applied in 1983 to restore it and to build a second house in the corner of the site bounded by Queen Anne’s Gardens and Bedford Road. This application was fiercely resisted on the grounds that the space had originally been left open as part of the design of Bedford Park, and more generally on grounds of over-development. After refusal of the application, the house was extensively damaged by a fire in 1987, and very little of the original structure was salvageable. The decision eventually reached was to allow rebuilding as near as possible to the original design, but with a single-storey extension. Some time later, it was discovered that the original lease of the house had envisaged the possibility of building a second, smaller, house in its grounds.

The Yews after disastrous 1987 fire. [Oliver West and John Scott]
All that was salvable of the Yews after the fire. [B L Duttson]
The Yews rebuilt with an extension. [Oliver West and John Scott]
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