Almost None of Hans Town Survives
Henry Holland, architect and son-in-law of Capability Brown, took a lease of eighty nine acres from Lord Cadogan in 1771 and laid out Hans Place, Cadogan Place and Sloane Street. Hans Place is an elongated octagonal square, said to imitate the shape of the Place Vendome and to borrow from the Circus at Bath.
What survives of it is very little, and the appraisal is able to list it exhaustively: numbers 123 and 139 Sloane Street, numbers 15, 33 and 34 Hans Place and possibly 30, 32 and 40, and the north-east end of Cadogan Place. That is the whole of it, and many of those are heavily altered. Number 123 Sloane Street is described as a poignant and valuable survivor, with graceful twelve pane box sash windows.
Everything else is the rebuilding. Holland's leases expired in the 1870s, and the Cadogan and Hans Place Estate Company, formed in 1875, replaced the stock brick Georgian stock wholesale. The Pavilion, Holland's own house, was demolished in 1874 and Cadogan Square laid out on its grounds.
The estate did not merely permit the result, it prescribed it. All new development was to take the red brick idiom of the Queen Anne Revival as its template, and each design had to be approved by Lord Cadogan personally. That is why the area reads as a single composition by many hands: Norman Shaw, George Devey, Ernest George and J. J. Stevenson among them. Osbert Lancaster coined the term Pont Street Dutch from the result.
The most useful single fact about the area is the line it draws. White stucco and stock brick to the east of Sloane Street; red brick and terracotta to the west. Hans Road is the Arts and Crafts exception, with numbers 14 and 16 by Voysey and number 12 by Mackmurdo.
The Roof Policy Grades Your Building on a Map
This is the strongest area-specific control in the borough, and it is easy to miss because it sits in the adopted Proposals Statement of 2000 rather than in the appraisal.
The Council normally resists proposals for additional storeys and adopts a cautious approach to other roof alterations. It then divides every building in the area into four categories, keyed to a proposals map, so the answer for any given address is already written down.
Category 1 is no additional storeys and improvements only. These are buildings with largely intact original roofs, and the statement is emphatic: given the importance of preserving the unaltered nature of these roofs, even minor alterations such as access housings or rooflights would be resisted. Category 2 is no additional storeys but possible adaptation of the existing profile, with scope to remodel inappropriate dormers or skylights, though alterations that significantly alter the roof profile are not acceptable. Category 3 is where an additional storey might be acceptable, because the original uniformity has already been lost or severely compromised and a new extension may help reunite the group. Category 4 is case by case, with a presumption against change.
Two warnings come with it. Perceived local precedents apparently justifying a proposal may be misleading. And on terraces, the presence of existing roof terraces cannot be taken as a valid precedent for the future.
The detailing is specified too. Rooflights should be avoided on principal or prominent slopes, and where accepted should sit virtually flush, be modest and upright, with minimal lead flashing and a frame in a low contrast colour, grey on slate. Dormer roofs should be tile or slate to match the host roof, with cheeks in lead, copper or zinc; facing cheeks in vertical hung slates or tiles is generally inappropriate, and face leadwork should be restricted to a few centimetres of flashing at the edges.
- Category 1
- Intact original roofs. No additional storeys, and even rooflights or access housings would be resisted.
- Category 2
- No additional storeys. Existing dormers and skylights may be remodelled; the profile may not significantly change.
- Category 3
- An additional storey might be acceptable, where uniformity is already lost and an extension could reunite the group.
- Category 4
- Case by case, with a presumption against change.
Brickwork, and a Field Test for Pointing
The adopted statement is blunter here than any other document in the borough. Painting brickwork is almost universally unacceptable and represents a mostly irreversible alteration which has a profound effect on a building's or an area's character. Rendering previously unrendered brickwork needs very strong and clear historical, structural or aesthetic justification, and impermeable weatherproofing coatings are virtually always inappropriate.
On mortar it is equally direct: cement and other impermeable coatings and pointing remain one of the greatest threats to the appearance and condition of Hans Town's brick buildings.
It then gives a field test that settles most arguments on site, and it is worth knowing before a contractor prices a full repoint. If the pointing has to be removed forcibly using a hammer and chisel, that is a clear indication that repointing is not necessary. Where it is necessary, rake out to between one and two times the joint width and not more than twenty millimetres, using a screwdriver, spike or fine saw. Power tools and saws are usually extremely damaging and should be avoided at all costs. Mortar must be lime based and weaker than the brick.
Cleaning gets the same treatment. Chemical and particle cleaning or excessive power washing are virtually always unacceptable, and the presumption should always be against cleaning. The reason given is one an owner rarely considers: in a uniform terrace, cleaning a single facade can destroy the collective integrity of the whole terrace.
One colour detail records an estate boundary rather than a preference. The buttermilk of Eaton Place against the white of Cadogan Place marks the transition from the Grosvenor Estate to the Cadogan Estate. Buttermilk reads Grosvenor; white reads Cadogan.
Windows, by Period and by Side of the Street
The governing rule is the borough's usual one: a single pattern of glazing bars should be retained within any uniform architectural composition. What Hans Town adds is a clear period sequence, which is the quickest way to date a replacement.
The multi-paned sashes of the late Georgian Hans Town houses, usually twelve pane. The simpler two and four pane sashes of the mid nineteenth century terraces. And the often elaborate glazing bar patterns of the late nineteenth century red brick terraces.
East of Sloane Street the predominant form is the double hung timber sash, with inward opening timber door sets frequent on principal first floors. West of Sloane Street there is more variety, including metal casements in stone mullioned windows, some with decorative projecting stays that the appraisal calls an essential part of the character. White paint on the frames is the unifying element across the Queen Anne Revival buildings, and black or coloured joinery is named as harm.
The replacement rules are unusually specific. Repair is almost always preferred to replacement. A vertical sliding timber box sash should always be replaced by an identical box sash and not by a top hung casement designed to imitate one. Non-structural glazing bars stuck to the face of a single pane are inappropriate, and ghost or shadow bars inside a sealed double glazed unit appear even more so. Tinted security and solar glass is generally unacceptable.
The Squares, and What the 1931 Act Does to Them
Six private communal gardens sit in the area: Cadogan Place north and south, Lowndes Square, Hans Place, Lennox Gardens and Cadogan Square. The southern Cadogan Place gardens, at seven and a half acres, are reputedly the largest private gardens in London, and the northern garden was laid out by Humphry Repton.
Most are protected by the London Squares Preservation Act 1931, which is a stronger and older control than most owners expect. A protected square may be used only as an ornamental garden, pleasure ground or ground for play, rest and recreation, and no building or structure may be erected on or over it except what is necessary for those purposes. Enforcement sits with the Council as a duty rather than a discretion, and the court may order a square restored to the state it was in before an offence, including the removal of unlawful structures.
One subsection matters directly for basements. The Act permits subsoil and underground works beneath a protected square with the Council's consent and subject to conditions. That is a separate consent from planning permission, and it sits on top of the borough-wide direction that already removes permitted development rights for basements.
The Act also settles a question the appraisals only assert. Its own schedule of owners names the Cadogan trustees for Cadogan Gardens, Cadogan Square and Hans Place, and the trustees under the will of Henry Smith for Lennox Gardens. Lennox Gardens is Smith's Charity land rather than Cadogan, and has been since before 1931.
What Is Not Here, and What Runs Underneath
There is no conservation area wide Article 4 direction removing householder permitted development rights for windows, doors or roofs across Hans Town. Only three directions touch the area at all: the borough-wide basement direction, the commercial to residential direction on the shopping frontages, and one small site-specific direction covering a very limited footprint near Hans Road and Herbert Crescent.
That does not make the area permissive, because conservation area status alone already removes a great deal: cladding, most roof alterations, side extensions and larger rear extensions all need permission regardless. And the roof categories above are policy rather than permitted development, so they apply to an application whether or not a direction exists.
Two things run beneath the area and both constrain basements. The River Westbourne passes between Cadogan Lane and Chesham Street and between Cadogan Place and Lowndes Street, and the appraisal treats its course as an important townscape gap. And the squares themselves are protected by the 1931 Act, with the subsoil consent that implies.
A smaller detail worth knowing before anyone repaints street furniture: the historic bollards from the Cadogan Estate and the Hans Town development are painted white, and where the Hans Town cipher exists it is picked out in black. Some are statutorily listed.