Something Old, Something New

This appears to be the result of an inability to decide what to build. It’s castellated, has a steeply pitched roof more often seen aloft a continental château, looks as if it is covered in icing sugar and exhales a neo-gothic aroma. A riddle wrapped in a mystery – one I can solve.

It was built for a solicitor, Gabriel Samuel Brandon, born in the City of London in 1823. He must have made a packet and wanted to flaunt his riches. It is an incongruous but delightful addition to the bland, brick buildings ranged along Goldhawk Road near Turnham Green, built around 1878. Brandon must take much of the credit for this idiosyncratic edifice as Pevsner comments.

”The core (of Queen Charlotte’s Hospital) is a house called Oakburn, stuccoed, neo-Gothic, with a rather charming right part which looks early 19th century and still rather Strawberry-Hillish, and a bigger and heftier left part by Brandon, 1878, with buttresses, oriel, and heavy roof with crenellations and pinnacles.” (London 3: North West, Bridget Cherry and Nikolaus Pevsner)

It might be mistaken for a white elephant if you have poor eyesight; just the sort of quirky mansion that is usually re-purposed by a property developer with a preference for high returns and a disregard for heritage. It is fortunate that it was acquired by Queen Charlotte’s when the hospital moved to Hammersmith between the wars. It became an administration building. Today it is has barely changed externally from Samual Brandon’s Strawberry Hill fantasy – inside it has been converted to flats. It might have become something like the ugly slabs at 181 Talgarth Road.

This is what it is supposed to look like when a 23-storey skyscraper has been built: an excellent example of drab, neo-dystopian architecture, bending the knee to Mammon at the expense of creativity that might beget beauty.

Margravine Cemetery is a source of pleasure to all who pass through on the way to work, dog walkers and families enjoying fifteen acres to play in. Here is it is in early spring floral mantling.