St Paul's Studios Update

An update on my post last week St. Paul's Studios on the Talgarth Road.

St Paul's Studios being sold 'off plan'
(right click and open in a new tab to see a larger image)

My post on Facebook drew this comment from Dennis Spicer - which answers some of the comments about noise.

I used to live very near these and got to know Alan Day when he came to my life drawing classes at Hammersmith Adult Education Centre. He was a designer and lived in the third one from the left in the photo. He had restored the front room as it would have been for a Victorian gentleman artist, including a bookshelf with a full set of The Yellow Book, the hallway was similarly restored and the other ground floor room was his bedroom,and the large studio room was his design studio. He had a modern steel and chrome style kitchen in the basement and the room next to it was his sister's bedroom. I remember the lack of noise in the house, due to a kind of Victorian double glazing system.During the summer break from the Adult Education classes he invited some of us to have a life drawing session in the studio, probably the last time the studio was used for its original purpose! He would often host visiting parties from both the Victorian and Edwardian Societies and the front room was used as a film set on several occasions, notably both Merchant/ Ivory films A Room With A View and Howard's End. He sadly died some years ago and the contents were put up for auction. Have found two sites showing pictures of the interior as I remember them.

The studio at #3 in use as a studio

These are:

• Contents of St Paul’s Studios sold at auction
• an blog by the gentleman who used to live at No 2, St Paul's Studios called (aptly!) Architectural Splendour on the Talgarth Road - it's URL is https://rememberthewindow.wordpress.com

The latter contains lots of information about the artists' studios in the area, specifically:

• Have it your way… relates to the gentleman whose contents were sold in the auction sale referenced above
• Colet House- the 9th Studio - which is the house next door - which has a HUGE studio

It has two spacious ground floor studios and an exceptionally large studio on the first floor – 10.5 metres by 22.5 metres (35ft x 75ft), comfortably long enough for a cricket pitch.

• An Arts & Craft Epicentre which references other purpose artists' studios built in the area
• A House Portrait which contains a rather nice drawing of one of the studios by a chap called Liam Wales who is an architectuiral illustrator
• The Studios’ First Sales Particulars - interesting to see the original layout unchanged by the occupants - and that the whole of the First Floor was seen as a studio space
• and finally, it's interesting to see that rather famous people have also lusted after these studios - see Sir Roy Strong’s Dream Home (Sir Roy Strong is a former Director of the National Portrait Gallery and then the Victoria and Albert Museum)

By the way - do have a look at the paintings on Dennis Spicer's website - they're delightful!