13 Howell’s Crescent

Cadw's description

Location

On south side of Howell’s Crescent amongst late Victorian housing, with 11 Howell’s Crescent to east and 25 Place Road to west.

History

House built 1979-80 for Sydney and Della Isaacs designed by Graham Brooks (1928-2020), built by T Boagey and son of Penarth. Construction cost was £69,000.

Graham Brooks graduated from the Welsh School of Architecture in 1952 and in 1956 joined the Penarth-based firm of Gerald Stanley and John Greenfell Hird, which soon became known as Hird and Brooks. Brooks was a great admirer of the Danish Modernist homes of architects such as Knud Friis and Jorn Utzon, an interest which pre-dated his marriage to a Dane. These architects in turn drew heavily on Welsh-American Frank Lloyd Wright’s ‘Prairie Style’ and ‘Usonian’ houses. Brooks’ critique of conventional British house building was that it over emphasised the signalling of social status in the façade to the detriment of actual living conditions inside the building, and he was a strident critic of volume house builders for what he saw as their lack of regard for orientation to the sun. With his own houses he used ‘L’ and ‘T' shapes enclosing private yards carefully oriented to capture sunlight. In 1968 Brooks won the National Eisteddfod Gold Medal for Architecture for the Capel House in Llandaff completed the same year. As well as individual houses Brooks designed several larger housing developments in the 1970s including The Mount and Merevale in Dinas Powys and Court Drive in Llansannor. Amongst many prizes Brooks received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Royal Society of Architects in Wales in 2002 and a Commendation from the Dewi-Prys Thomas Prize in 2012.

Brooks’ returned to Llandaff at the end of the 1970s to build 13 Howell’s Crescent for the Isaacs. The site for the new house was formerly the bottom half of the large garden of the Isaacs' Victorian house on the corner of Palace Road and Howell’s Crescent, and it encloses a swimming pool which Brooks built in the 1960s. Sydney Isaacs was a solicitor and the first chairman of the Cardiff New Opera Group established in 1982. Although retired by 2008 Brooks personally drew up plans for converting the car port at 13 Howell’s Crescent into an enclosed garage. According to friends and relatives he considered 13 Howell’s Crescent to have been his best house.

Exterior

Danish-influenced Modernist house in red brick with curved tile roofs on an expressed timber roof frame stained dark, projecting beyond the building to form large eaves and pergolas. Timber framed large panel windows. Three high brick walls define the ‘L’ shaped plan, screening off the inner house and extending above the high starting points of the sloping roofs, enclosing a multi levelled garden with a swimming pool. Single storey with variation in level between wings.

North wall faces Howell’s Crescent with entrance hall to left and garage to right. This wall is blind to the street except for a small central square window into the living room. On its south side a monopitch roof with ribbon rooflight descends with eaves projecting over patio doors and floor to ceiling glazing to living room looking over swimming pool. Roof slope defines large triangular clerestory to west side of living room (intended to catch the setting sun), interrupted by tall rectilinear brick chimney.

East wall projects out to the north with low entrance hall nestled in the corner with sloping monopitch roof with overhanging eaves. On this entrance block the front door on left projects beyond small square window on right. A roof slopes down from the inner side of the east wall over the dining room, hipped with the slope over the living room, with ribbon rooflight. Dining room with south facing patio doors projects out to south beyond living room. Wall projects out to the south with a single person sized archway leading on to the path between the dining room and swimming pool which is sheltered by a pergola projecting from the base of the roof slope. Small deep square window at low level in wall on east side of dining room. On the outer side of the east wall two shorter stepped roofs cover the main and utility kitchens in the gap between main house and 11 Howell’s Crescent.

West wall screening property to 25 Palace Road with monopitch roof sloping over bedroom wing on east side, a level lower than the rest of the house (facing onto garden area sunken below pool level). Roof is hipped at intersection between bedroom wing, master bedroom suite and north garage. Garage has monopitch sloping to east with sloping clerestory to west and triangular clerestory to north. Blind gable to south of bedroom wing. Four square rooflights at intervals along this range.

Interior

Unplastered brick walls to main areas and painted cement render walls to bedrooms, with dark stained structural timbers consistent with the exterior of the property. Some bricks have been painted black to recreate the effect of occasional burnt bricks, reportedly a finishing touch applied by Brooks himself. Floors are lacquered bricks set in a basket weave pattern. Entrance hall with short flight of brick steps overlit by rooflight with exposed roof timbers. Large living room with middle area surrounded by integral brick seating backed by half height walls enclosing the fireplace set against the west wall. This fireplace consists of a massive projecting brick cubic hearth offset from the interior chimney stack. Opposite the fireplace single wide pocket door into dining room. Walkway outside the seating area leads to short flight of steps down to the long narrow corridor against north and west walls linking bedrooms. Unvarnished fine-sawn redwood boards to ceilings and original light oak doors stained red.

Reason for designation

Included for special architectural interest as an outstanding example of the influence of Scandinavian Modernism on private housing in postwar Wales. Amongst the best work of Graham Brooks, one of Wales’ most celebrated domestic architects, showing his harmonisation of Modernist spatial planning with sensitivity to local context.