St Pancras North Conservative Club, Kentish Town

Grade II listing:- House, c1824, with later alterations.

EXTERIOR: a double-fronted brick house of c1824, stuccoed to the front, with a basement, raised ground floor, first floor and flat roof concealed behind a raised parapet with moulded cornice. Steps lead to the original front door, with studded raised panels, slender pilasters and margin lights (some Victorian painted glass), and a rectangular fanlight. The timber sash windows are modern replacements closely matching the originals; two original windows survive to the rear (in the western first floor back room and the ground floor scullery). The door and ground and first floor windows have plain stone surrounds to the front and gauged brick flat arches to the rear, except to the single bay rear extension which is stuccoed. The railings to the street are modern. The return to Lady Margaret Road is blind and lacks any architectural finishes, reflecting the fact that the house was once one of a pair. The rear elevation, unpainted, has a central tall 6 over 6 stair window. INTERIOR: the house retains much of its original arrangement of rooms, although the pairs of ground floor reception rooms to either side of the central hall have been knocked through to create two large rooms running the depth of the house. The open-well stair, with its plain stick balusters and moulded handrail terminating in a curtail survives, lit by a tall stair window at the rear of the house. The hall has an original cornice, pilasters and arched opening, and a vestibule screen of the 1920s. Both the rooms to the left of the hall have round-arched alcoves to either side of the fireplace, though the central two have been altered to create a single alcove, presumably when the two rooms were opened into one. The two timber fire surrounds survive here, with paterae, reeding and moulded mantelshelves, but just the front room grate is original. The front room on the right side of the hall also has round-arched alcoves to either side of the fireplace, which has an original heavily-moulded timber surround. The back room here has a larger chimney opening which probably once housed a cooking range and no flanking round-arched recesses. The doors and architraves are original throughout; those to the ground floor reception rooms are reeded with paterae. All the original window shutters also survive. Of the principal rooms, only the cornice in the rear bedroom to the right off the landing is original but other rooms have modern replicas to match. The first floor retains two original fireplaces with the same reeded surrounds as those on the ground floor and a plain stone surround to a small fireplace in the rear extension. The stairs down to the scullery in the rear extension have original shelves and wall cupboards. The partition dividing this area and the scullery itself is panelled in wood to one side and with linen stretched across a wood frame to the other, a highly unusual survival. This may have been a china cupboard; the linen would have prevented the china from chipping if knocked against the panelling. There is also an older six-pane window above the door in this internal partition, which is 1720s or 1730s in appearance and possibly salvaged from an earlier house. The basement retains some original doors and two chimney openings.

HISTORY: Leighton Road was developed in the early C19, known first as Evans Place, then Gloucester Place (from c1816), before assuming its current name in the 1860s. In 1804 it was but a pathway leading from Kentish Town to Islington, with a stile at the eastern end and a bowling green on its north side near where No. 37 Leighton Road now stands; this was probably for patrons of the Assembly House inn located at the corner of Kentish Town Road. At this time the land was owned by one Joshua Prole Torriano. From the 1820s, small freehold plots were sold off for development, each sufficient for one or two houses only. 37 Leighton Road was one of the first new houses to be completed on Leighton Road, c1824. It appears on an 1834 map of the area and on subsequent Ordnance Survey maps. It was originally one of a pair and a similarly large house abutted it to the north, but this was demolished when Lady Margaret Road was laid out in the mid-C19. No. 37 Leighton Road was the home of the local Conservative Club from the 1920s until the 1990s.

REASONS FOR DESIGNATION: No. 37 Leighton Road is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons: * Historic and Architectural Interest: a house of c1824 retaining much of the original plan and fabric; * Group Value: as part of a small cluster of late Georgian suburban houses, a reminder of Kentish Town's village character in the early C19, before the suburb was subsumed into the capital from the 1850s.