A masterful courtyard house concealed behind an apartment block on Clerkenwell Green, the Paxton Locher House was created by the eponymous practice as their own family home in the mid 1990s and has been widely celebrated as one of the great London houses of the 20th Century. Its unique design includes an enormous retractable glass roof that gives natural light all year round and turns the house into a courtyard with an open sky in warmer months.
Clerkenwell Green is a conservation area and one of London’s oldest public squares. Despite its leafy quietude, and the gentle din of pubs, cafes and restaurants around its trapezium, this agora of sorts has a riotous history of dissent, democracy and protest dating back to the 12th Century.
Among its important historical buildings are a few successful contemporary insertions. The apartment block that was built at the same time as the house to the rear is one such, with a commercial space and private garage at ground level and huge glazed sections across its upper levels. The garage has space for two cars and is for the sole use of the house and one of the apartments.
A gated passage leads to the back of the block, providing a covered entry to the house’s courtyard garden and stainless steel front door. It’s a dramatic reveal moving from dark to light.
