Robert Weir Schultz (1860 – 1951) was a Scottish architect and designer, many of whose buildings are now category-A listed, reflecting the high quality of his work. As a young architect he worked in the offices of Norman Shaw, one of a few progressive architects of the time providing an alternative to the oft-vulgar designs demanded by patrons in the opulent wake of 19th-century industrialism.

Following his time in Shaw’s practice, Weir Schultz moved to Scotland where he produced a number of progressive designs for the Earl of Bute. Many of these designs broke away from the conventional ‘block’ plan and experimented with new forms intended to maximise sunlight by spreading the building wings in the form of a butterfly, as in the example of How Green House.

The commission for How Green House came from Mowbray Charrington, of the brewing family, who tasked Weir Schultz to design a ‘small’ country house for his family on the site of an existing farmhouse. It was completed in 1905, at a cost of £5,000 (a typical terraced house at that time would have cost about £100). The Charrington Family lived in the house until the mid-1930s. In 1948 the house was sold to Frederic and Maria Floris, the colourful Hungarian pastry cooks whose well-patronised Soho shop specialised in expensive cakes and chocolates. Winston Churchill was a neighbour and regular visitor to the property during their tenure. The Floris family were the last to occupy How Green House as a single, family residence.

The house then fell into disrepair and was rescued from demolition in the 1960s by a local builder who converted the property into four houses. The house eventually came into the ownership of Norman Engleback, a well-known architect with the LCC and the leading hand in two of the capital’s most distinctive postwar buildings: the Queen Elizabeth Hall, Purcell Room and Hayward Gallery complex for the South Bank; and the National Recreation Centre at Crystal Palace (now known as the National Sports Centre).