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Jack Straw’s Castle, North End
Way, London NW3, Raymond Erith, 1962-4, Grade II
Jack Straw’s Castle [click
here for an image] is a landmark building in many
ways. You would be forgiven for thinking it was much
older than it really is, but then again, it was built
by Raymond Erith, the skilful master of the classical
language of architecture... so although it is built
in the ‘Gothic Georgian’ idiom, it dates from
the 1960s. It is also Erith’s only public building
entirely built from scratch.
The plan of the public house is very
much utilitarian, and the building form is shaped by
the various functions needed for a pub, with, for example,
one towers housing a lift, the other the water tanks.
What Erith wanted to demonstrate with Jack Straw’s
Castle was the other side of modernism, where form follows
function, but using traditional materials in a traditional
way. It has a timber frame, because the architect thought
it was the best-suited material for pubs. But the entire
frame was prefabricated and assembled on site in 3 months,
hence using a very modern system.
Jack Straw’s Castle is therefore
a very significant building of the post-war era and
we felt that its listing grade did not reflect it appropriately.
We did try to get it upgraded to II* but unfortunately
our arguments failed to convince the Department of Culture,
Media and Sport.
The Public House has recently been
the subject of three consecutive planning applications,
all withdrawn within a few months of one another. The
Society opposed in the strongest terms the proposal
to convert the listed pub into a mixed-use development,
as it would have had the most adverse affect on the
character of this fine listed building.
The fittings inside the building are
original and nearly everything has survived virtually
unchanged, therefore the proposal to turn the upper
floors into serviced apartments would have meant loosing
much original fabric. The proposed changes would have
altered the listed building beyond reason, and tampered
with the original fenestration’s pattern and form,
with the number of windows both increased and unsympathetically
altered. It was also proposed to uniform and standardize
the building’s elevations, a principle wholly against
Erith’s concept. The applicants clearly sought
to over-develop the fabric of the original building
and remove many original features to fit their plans.
The few minor concessions made in
the latest batch of proposals did not overcome the fact
that the developers’ plans for Jack Straw’s
Castle were diametrically opposed to the essence of
its listed status and therefore highly unsuitable for
such an important building.
Acknowledgement: Lucy Archer
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