Murray Mews III
London NW1
Architect: Michael Lewis
Register for similar homesThis exceptional three-bedroom terraced house on the ever-popular Murray Mews has been designed to an exacting standard by the architect Michael Lewis. He originally built the house in 1984, and carried out a full refurbishment and extension in 2013. For more information on Murray Mews, please see the History section below.
Internal accommodation measures approximately 1,346 sq ft over three storeys. The house is approached via an attractively landscaped front courtyard. Upon entering, there is a hallway with a shower room to one side. There is an elegant modern kitchen at the front, with white handle-less units and a quartz worktop, and this opens onto the dining / family room at the rear. Double-glazed French doors provide access to the garden, which is unusually large for a mews house.
The first floor contains a master bedroom at the rear with an en-suite bathroom, a second double bedroom at the front with an en-suite shower room, and a single third bedroom. The top floor is a recent addition. The wonderfully bright reception room has windows to both aspects: pitched glazing to the front that opens electrically, and glazed folding sliding doors to the rear that pull back to reveal a full-width terrace with views over gardens and the imposing period houses on Camden Square. There is also a guest cloakroom on this floor.
The house is equipped with under-floor heating to the ground and second floors, and has a sedum’ green’ roof. It has large-format porcelain floor tiles throughout the ground floor, and oak flooring to the second floor.
Murray Mews is a quiet cobbled street just off Camden Square. The house is approximately equidistant between the Underground stations at Camden Town (Northern Line), Kentish Town (Northern Line) and Caledonian Road (Piccadilly Line). Camden Road Overground station is close at hand, and there are Thameslink services from Kentish Town. The house is also well placed for access to the Eurostar terminal at St Pancras International.
Murray Mews is within the catchment area of Camden School for Girls. It contains a number of other outstanding modern houses by well-known architects, including Tom Kay and Team 4 (Richard Rogers and Norman Foster’s original practice), and is popular with architects and those in the creative industries.
Michael Lewis studied at The Bartlett School of Architecture and qualified in 1978. After working in both Philadelphia and London, he co-founded the practice of Child Graddon Lewis, based in Spitalfields. There, he was responsible for a number of major award-winning residential projects in both the private and public sectors, including contemporary apartment schemes in Covent Garden, Shoreditch, canalside in Hackney, Kent and Devon.
Please note that all areas, measurements and distances given in these particulars are approximate and rounded. The text, photographs and floor plans are for general guidance only. The Modern House has not tested any services, appliances or specific fittings — prospective purchasers are advised to inspect the property themselves. All fixtures, fittings and furniture not specifically itemised within these particulars are deemed removable by the vendor.
History
Murray Mews charts the work of many key architects, with a particular focus on their approach towards challenging residential projects. Located on the eastern edges of Camden, each house was designed to serve the needs of its original occupants while also responding to the strict building and planning regulations imposed on the tight spaces that typically define a London mews.
The site was first recognised and developed in 1963 by Team 4, the architectural firm established that year composed of Richard Rogers, Norman Foster, Su Brumwell and Wendy Cheesman. The practice developed houses 15-19 using their favoured building components at the time: brick cavity walls and concrete floors. The project proved to be a challenging and often lengthy process, as the mews had to be developed in such a way that the public space was not overly encroached on by the newly built houses. The architects’ frustration with this is proven by their noticeable departure from this style in their later residential work, as evidenced by Rogers and Brumwells’ 22 Parkside, constructed at the end of that same decade.
Despite these challenges, the architects achieved their aim of establishing privacy for the occupants while simultaneously creating forward-thinking, open spaces using skylights and a predominantly axial structure. Indeed, these early homes are demonstrative of the type of work executed by many architects engaged in the housing debates of the 1960s. The development reflects a clear drive to create a built environment that served both the private requirements of their occupants and protected the needs of the community.
In the mid-1960s, these same design challenges were tackled and interpreted by the likes of Richard Gibson and Tom Kay, as Murray Mews quickly became a destination for other architects and their families. While by the turn of the century the mews had become less of an architect’s haven, in 2006 Hay Currey, a partner in FLACQ Architects, undertook his own project at number 32. The original design principles are structurally evidenced through the space’s open internal layout, however, its zinc external cladding can be seen as a significant point of departure from the brick walls of Currey’s predecessors.
In this way, Murray Mews has acted as a blank canvas for architects since the early 1960s, with each unique home respecting the aims of the original project, while also reinterpreting the design challenges faced by the urban space.
