Airport House
Purley Way, Croydon CR0 0XZ
Saturday/Sunday 11am-3pm. Regular tours
Biggin Hill Airfield
Scott Aviation Centre, 518 Churchill Road Biggin Hill TN16 3BN
Sunday tours, 10.30am, 11.30am, 1pm, 2pm, 3pm, 4pm
See how we used to do air travel in more elegant art deco times at London’s
first airport, Croydon — one of the earliest purpose-built terminals in the
world, and now Grade II listed. Follow up at Biggin Hill by inspecting the
pill boxes and bomb shelters built for a very different flying experience —
The Battle of Britain.
Brick House
31A Hatherly Grove, W2 5RB
Saturday tours 9am-1pm. Pre-book only on info@carusostjohn.com
One of the cleverest, seemingly simplest, most atmospheric new homes built in
Britain in recent years. Cunningly hidden in back-lots behind Victorian
terraces, and without a real façade to speak of, this is a house almost
entirely made up of interiors. Very rarely open to the public.
Centre Point
103 New Oxford Street, WC1A 1DU
Saturday tours at 9am, 10am and 11am. Pre-book only on
openhouse.org.uk/generalinfo
Richard Seifert’s great 60s white elephant is now listed and, with revisionist
history, even admired — it’s still more elegant than most of Britain’s
latest skyscrapers. Even if you can’t stand the thing, at least enjoy the
splendid view from the 33rd floor.
Fawood Children’s Centre
35 Fawood Avenue, Stonebridge Estate, Harlesden NW10 8DX
Saturday 10am-2pm
Big, bright, silly and deadly serious: Will Alsop is at his best in this RIBA
award winning nursery-cum-health-centre-cum-family-centre: a giant,
knockabout play-pen filled with jolly shapes, at the heart of the
once-notorious, now rebuilt Stonebridge Estate.
Garden Suburbs walks and tours
Britain’s greatest urban invention — the suburb — at its elegant best.
Hampstead Garden Suburb (arts and crafts) Sunday 1pm and 2pm, meet outside
Barclays, corner Finchley Road and Hampstead Way; and 4.30pm, meet at the
car park, St Jude’s on the Hill, Central Square NW11 7AH
Ealing Village (1930s) Sunday 1pm-5pm, off Hangar Lane W5 2LY
Brentham Garden Suburb (arts and crafts) Saturday and Sunday, 10.30pm, meet at
The Brentham Club, 38 Meadvale Road, W5 1NP
Tower Gardens Garden Suburb (arts and crafts) Sunday, 9am-5pm. Self guided
tour; collect guide at 5 Tower Gardens Road, N17 7PX
Gidea Park Garden Suburb (Edwardian) Saturday, 10.15am, meet car park
entrance, Balgores Square, RM2 6AU
Bedford Park (arts and crafts) Sunday 2pm, meet The Victorian Society, 1
Priory Gardens W4 1TT
Grims Dyke
Old Redding, Harrow Weald, HA3 6SH
Sunday tours 1pm, 2pm, 4pm. Pre-book only on 0208 385 3100
One of the rash of fascinating new country houses Richard Norman Shaw built
for Victorian new money in the late 19th century, with ultra-modern
conveniences cloaked, typically for the time of arts and crafts, in an old
English style. Later home to librettist WS Gilbert, of Gilbert and Sullivan
fame.
Lloyd’s of London
One Lime Street, EC3M 7HA
Saturday 10am-5pm
It’s easy to overlook the buildings that just a few years ago were the
must-sees of Open House. Twenty years after “The Espresso Machine” first
opened, what was heralded at the time as the pinnacle of British hi-tech
seems more eccentric and visonary than rational; how sane putting the guts
of the building on the outside seemed at the time!
Maggie’s Centre
Charing Cross Hospital, Fulham Palace Road, W6 8RF
Sunday 10am-5pm, Regular tours
The award-winning drop-in cancer-care centres have brought superstar
architects — Frank Gehry, Zaha Hadid et al — to Scotland. This, the first to
be built in England, by Rogers, Stirk, Harbour & Partners embodies the
humane domesticity that characterised the charity’s beginnings.
19 Princelet Street
19 Princelet Street, E1 6QH
Saturday and Sunday 10am-6pm
One of London’s least known and most characterful hidden gems — a teetering,
rickety mid-19th century synagogue built behind one of Spitalfields’ famous
grade II*-listed Huguenot silk-merchants’ homes.
The Reform Club
104 Pall Mall, SW1Y
Saturday 10am-5pm, Sunday 10am-3pm. Pre-book only on
generaloffice@reformclub.com. No children.
Normally, they wouldn’t give us the time of day, but for two days only the hoi
polloi can nose round Pall Pall’s gentlemen’s clubs —without a tie, too.
They’ll even let in women. But kids are beyond the pale. Designed by Sir
Charles Barry of Houses of Parliament fame, the Reform updates a Renaissance
palace with cunning modern (for the Victorians) central heating and mod cons.
Royal Courts of Justice
Strand WC2A 2LL
Saturday 10am-4.30pm
Normally the last place you’d want to see the inside of. Rarely so fully open
to the public, GE Street’s masterly Victorian neo-gothic complex is one of
London’s most secretive monuments — the façade is so often seen on TV new
reports behind battling litigants. But what goes on inside?
Rudolf Steiner House
35 Park Road, NW1 6XT
Sunday 2pm-5pm
A rare piece of 1920s continental expressionism, a style scarce in Britain,
this building is justly famous for its gorgeous, curvaceous Gaudi-esque
staircase.
Trellick Tower
5 Golborne Road, W10 5UT
Sunday 10.30am-4.30pm Pre-book only on openhouse.org.uk/generalinfo
Balfron Tower
St Leonard’s Road, Poplar E14 0QT
Saturday and Sunday 10am-5pm
Erno Goldfinger’s twin concrete 60s/70s apartment towers tell the tale of
London’s two cities. Trellick, up West, has become one of the capital’s most
sought-after addresses. The Balfron, in one of the East End’s least sexy
spots beside the Blackwall Tunnel, hasn’t. Guess which one’s going to be
busiest?
Underground Bunker, Neasden
Brook Road NW2 7DZ
Saturday 8.30am-5pm. Pre-book only on 0208 782 4239
Straight out of an Ealing Comedy, who’d have thought Winston Churchill and the
Cabinet would have retreated to Neasden when the bombs dropped? See suburban
Whitehall, Cabinet Room and all, sealed in concrete 40ft below the semis.
Westminster Academy
255 Harrow Road W2 5EZ
Saturday 10am-5pm. Regular tours
You might not like its on-message, New Labour rhetoric, but this, the
favourite to win this October’s Stirling Prize, is undeniably the most
convincing of the country’s new breed of schools. PS: You’d better like the
colour green.
