Heritage Statement for LBC 4 Charterhouse Square, London Reinstatement of the External Railings, Flagstones, the addition of a new sash window and external stairway to 4 Charterhouse Square in the London Borough of Islington. Burrell Foley Fischer LLP November 2018 Ref: 1352 4 CHARTERHOUSE SQUARE, LONDON, EC1M 6EE Heritage and Planning Statement in support of listed building application for internal and external alterations on the lower ground floor, ground floor and second floor 1.1. Introduction 1.2. The property requiring listed building consent became Grade II listed in 1950 along with the neighbouring property (no. 5 Charterhouse Square). The building forms part of the Charterhouse square conservation area in the London Borough of Islington. The building has been residential since the owner bought it in 2013. 1.3. This heritage statement will be used to inform the design process for internal and external works to the building accompanying planning applications including listed building consent. 1.4. The works Include: • The reinstatement of the existing external railings and the placement of a new external stairway leading to the basement • A new sash window to replace the removed toilet block on the second floor rear elevation. • Reinstating the existing flags stones on the front elevation • Application of a new render to the existing brickwork on the lower ground floor front elevation. 1.5. This Heritage Statement includes: • Historic information regarding 4 Charterhouse Square and the surrounding area • An appraisal of the historical significance of the building, and the contribution this building makes to the setting of nearby heritage assets, including the Charterhouse Square Conservation Area. • A review of the past planning applications made regarding the building • An assessment of how the proposed works will affect the surrounding conservation area and the significance of the Grade II listed building. • How the proposed works comply with relevant policies in the NPPF and the PPG, and how the works are in accordance with local and regional planning policies. 1.6. Location 1.7. The building is located to the East of Charterhouse square neighbouring no.5 Charterhouse square to the North and 3 Charterhouse square occupied by Montage Design to the South. It is located within the Charterhouse Square Conservation area within the London borough of Islington. 1.8. The conservation area in question contains a number of designated heritage assets. No.5 is grade II listed along with No.4. To the North of the site sits Charterhouse square, a Grade I listed building. Other listed buildings to the North are Florin Court, No 12a,12,13 and 14 Charterhouse Square all of which grade II listed. The South side of the square and Carthusian Street lie within the Charterhouse Square Conservation Area within the City of London. The square itself is protected under the London Squares Preservation Act of 1931; the square and all its buildings have also been designated by the London Borough of Islington as an Archaeological Priority Area. The Charterhouse Square Area 1.9. Historical Background 1.10. Information based on the Survey of London: Volume 46, South and East Clerkenwell. Originally published by London County Council, London, 2008 1.11. The Charterhouse was founded as a Carthusian priory in 1371, became a private mansion after its dissolution in 1538, and in 1611 was converted for charitable purposes as 'Sutton's Hospital in Charterhouse', in which use it continues today. What is now Charterhouse Square belonged to the priory's outer precinct, acting as a buffer zone between it and the City. 1.12. At the Dissolution much of the outer precinct of the Carthusian priory remained open ground. The present garden of the square, commonly known as the Charterhouse Churchyard is attested as a Black Death burial ground. Before the eighteenth century the open space was variously described as the Charterhouse precinct, Charterhouse Yard or Charterhouse Close as well as Charterhouse Churchyard. Its freehold ownership, together with the chapel and the gatehouses, passed along with the Charterhouse itself to Lord North in 1545 and the Duke of Norfolk in 1565. 1.13. By contrast, ownership of the buildings surrounding the yard became fragmented after the Dissolution. At least one of the larger properties here had already been leased by the priory to laymen. In 1532 Sir John Neville, Lord Latimer, took a lease of a mansion at the east end of the churchyard, formerly held by the Abbot of Pershore. The Tudor fragments that survived at No. 10 Charterhouse Square until the Blitz probably belonged to this house. The former precinct in the mid- sixteenth century therefore drew owners and residents of high status. That persisted for the next century and a half. Property here was doubtless attractive because of its proximity to the Charterhouse (which housed a succession of powerful and influential figures down to its sale to Thomas Sutton), its position at the edge of the City yet beyond the authority of the Corporation, and its protected seclusion. 1.14. As its environs became more thickly populated, Charterhouse Yard began to change. Houses along the east and south sides were redeveloped and aristocrats gave way to bourgeois residents. A harbinger was the breaking-up of the Rutland House property after 1660, first by means of a glasshouse on part of the garden, then with a series of tenement developments built around Glasshouse Yard east of the Charterhouse garden. The first change to affect the topography of Charterhouse Yard was the cutting-through in 1687 of the narrow street now known as Hayne Street on the site of a large mansion on its south side, thus connecting Long Lane with the yard (Ill. 334). The Charterhouse governors sought to recover their precinct's integrity by ordering the new street's closure. Instead, to mitigate the intrusion, it was gated and a porter's box placed nearby. Then between 1688 and 1705 redevelopment transformed all four sides, coinciding almost exactly with the reign of William and Mary. Some of this building was substantial in scale, as the four-storey survivors at Nos 4 and 5 Charterhouse Square attest. In 1708 Charterhouse Yard, was described as a pleasant place. Peers had now vanished, leaving the rebuilt enclave thoroughly bourgeois. Along with the change came collective responsibility. In both 1715 and 1742 residents took action to improve the open space, the latter initiative resulting in an Act of Parliament and the establishment of trustees. With the perimeter built up and the central garden fenced and laid out with crossing walks and low trees, the yard was transformed into the equivalent of a West End square. Despite the presence of two public houses in the 1760s, eight merchants had addresses here by the middle of the eighteenth century, and there were soon more. Five clergymen are listed among the 35 householders in 1790. Early in the next century Robert Smythe, historian of the Charterhouse, could note with satisfaction that 'the inhabitants are of the most respectable description'. With the advent of the Royal London Ophthalmic Hospital at No. 40 in 1805, and the proximity of St Bartholomew's Hospital, surgeons also began to find the square eligible. In the 1820s there were five of them and in 1842 eight. But by the latter date the buildings were increasingly being used other than as family houses, with three schools, two lodging-houses and an infirmary listed. The Victorian opening-up of the square followed hard upon the re-planning of Smithfield Market and the cutting-through of the railway. In 1864–5 the Metropolitan Railway Co. bought the whole of the south side in order to construct an extension from Farringdon to Moorgate in a cutting immediately behind, where it built a station at first called Aldersgate Street, now Barbican. Then in 1868, the year of the formal opening of its new Smithfield Market, the City Corporation opened negotiations to create a highway connecting it to Aldersgate Street via Charterhouse Square. This road was part of a long, straight alignment planned to run west—east all the way from Farringdon Road to Aldersgate Street, passing en route along the north side of the market. The advent of the railway made property on Charterhouse Square's south side shallow and ineligible. The surviving houses were soon replaced by showrooms and warehouses occupied by milliners and clothiers. By the time of this change several houses in the square were already being used as staff hostels by wholesale clothing firms. Social deterioration was the consequence. Nos 4 and 5 are the only surviving William and Mary buildings of Charterhouse Square. They were built on part of the land leased in 1696 by the Jemmatts to William Desborough. Presumably because of his financial problems, the sites were still vacant in October 1697. The two houses appear to have been built by Robert Brabourne between then and his death in September 1701. Thomas Dorrington of St Andrew Holborn, bricklayer, was probably the main contractor. With their higher storeys, Nos 4 and 5 were more ambitious than Nos 1–3 and perhaps the tallest houses in the square. They shared a flat leaded roof, shown in early views adorned with a central cupola or belvedere and a balustrade— unusually pretentious features for terrace houses The front elevations are consistent in design with a date of about 1700, but the existing brickwork, particularly the yellow London stocks, suggests that they have been much rebuilt or refaced. The heightening of the paired doorcases to allow fanlights probably took place in the early nineteenth century. No. 4 is half a bay narrower than No. 5, but otherwise the plans of the two houses were originally almost mirror images, with the classic two-room layout per floor and rear closet wings rising to all four storeys.