Description
A double bedroom available for rent in a spacious two-storey terraced house designed by Ted Hollamby in Myatts Fields South, shared with one other person — the landlady and a friendly Jack Russell. The ground floor comprises a large open plan kitchen/dining area, downstairs cloakroom, and a bright living room with patio doors leading to the private patio garden. The first floor benefits from high ceilings and large windows, with the rented bedroom overlooking the garden.

The bedroom is offered furnished with a double bed, large wardrobe and two chests of drawers, plus beneficial use of a well-lit bathroom (the other bedroom has its own en-suite). Rent is inclusive of bills including fibre-optic broadband, use of a dishwasher, a washing machine, and the services of a fortnightly cleaner, but excludes additional phone-calls or TV license (though the tenant is welcome to arrange one if desired).

The house is situated on the quiet pedestrianised estate of Myatts Fields South, with permit-free parking available within sight of the house. Secure cycle storage is available in the private garden.

Myatts Fields South is located 10 minutes walk from Brixton underground and overground stations, and 12 minutes to Oval underground or Loughborough Junction overground stations. It is well served by a number of bus routes to Kings Cross, Waterloo, London Bridge, Liverpool Street, Trafalgar Square, Streatham/Crystal Palace (via Brixton) etc from a stop at the end of the road. The nearest supermarket is 3 minutes walk away, and central Camberwell can be reached on foot in 15 minutes. Myatts Field Park and its Little Cat Cafe are a two-minute walk away.

The room is available from November.

History
Edward Hollamby was appointed Chief Architect of the London Borough of Lambeth in 1962. Along with his team, he was responsible for some of the best low-rise, high-density estates in London in the 1960s and 70s — good quality, small, mainly infill schemes including Virginia Walk, Blenheim Gardens, Cressingham Gardens, Central Hill Estate and Myatts Fields, winning a number of awards.

Hollamby’s aim was ‘to create a sense of smallness inside the bigness…and to get the kind of atmosphere in which people did not feel’. He believed people did not want to be housed in large estates, no matter how imaginative the design and convenient the dwellings, and preferred more humane designs, which were modern yet retained a continuity of tradition. He was also a great believer in listening and responding to the communities he was building for.

The estates were almost always built from good quality materials such as slate and London stock brick, with a mix of flats, townhouses and courtyard houses for the elderly built around shared parks, with cars restricted to the perimeters. Careful landscaping, trees and community centres were all important parts of the designs. Front doors often faced each other, with kitchen widows facing the walkways to promote neighbourliness. Internally the dwellings were designed to maximise daylight with skylights and split rooflines. The results were successful communities in village-like, well thought-out and humane estates, which are much valued by their residents.