40 CONTEXT 185 : SEPTEMBER 2025 and the trust is keen for these to stay. While the trust can only control external alterations to freehold properties in the area, we ask for engineering details for chimney stack support where the underlying chimney breast is being removed, to show it will be retained. As the suburb continued development after the first world war, fashions diversified from Unwin’s initial arts and crafts focus to a variety of interwar styles, among them art deco and Georgian revival. Generally, the same handmade tiles were used but the roof forms became simpler, with the vernacular assortment of gables, valleys and ridges being replaced with comparatively sober hipped or pitched roofs. In the 1930s, a handful of properties were roofed with eye-catching green glazed pantiles and some were even given modernist flat-roofed decks. At the trust we give equal conservation emphasis to the early and later phases of the suburb’s development. The suburb is generally affluent and there are consistent pressures to alter properties. For this reason, it is important that the trust continues to publish guidance on various aspects of the area’s architecture, while providing advice for proposed designs and building work both in the office and on site. In June, my colleague Calum Orr and I delivered a walking tour for suburb residents promoting the upcoming guide. Many attending the tour told us they found themselves looking at buildings in a different way. I am still struck by the new details and views I encounter every time I walk through the area, where roofs are such a big part of its historic character. A pronounced chimney stack on a house on Addison Way Joe Mathieson is architectural adviser to the Hampstead Garden Suburb Trust. An exaggerated sprocket on a house in Reynolds Close Pre-war houses with coped gables on Denman Drive
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