Built next to Kensal Green Gas Works, Kensal House was designed by architect Maxwell Fry in collaboration with Elizabeth Denby to set new standards.
Originally, the building was intended for the housing of the employees of the Gas Light and Coke Company and was situated on the company site. Until the Second World War, blocks of flats were often designed to include communal amenities. For the wealthy, these were an added luxury or convenience paid for by a service charge, while for the less well-off in state housing they were a way of sharing basic facilities. In this progressive modernist housing scheme there were communal workshops and other shared facilities, including a community centre, crèche, communal laundry and canteen facilities.
The original design of the Kensal House flats was intended to act as a competitor to the advance of electricity as both as lighting and power source. As originally designed, in Kensal House, there was no electricity supply at all.
Frank Hatton who lived in the block in the late 1930s added:
There was an electrical battery used to ignite the centre ceiling room lights. The wall switch, when pushed downwards activated a cable which opened the gas flow to the centre room light. This also sent a supply from the battery to a heating element which ignited the gas to the gas mantle, which then lit the room.
Cooking was done on a gas oven, and gas hob, and the heating of the hot water was by way of a gas geyser. (A ’geyser’ by the way was a device which was fixed to the wall in the kitchen; it was about 24 inches high and about 6 inches diameter. It had a water supply connection, and a gas supply connection, and was designed to supply instant hot water whenever it was needed. It worked by way of a water valve, which operated as soon as water flowed through it, because the water also open the gas valve which was then ignited by a small pilot light, which then heated the water to the water tap in both the kitchen and bathroom. Therefore only the required amount of hot water was used, as the water heating only worked when the water flowed through it.)
Room heating was by way of a open coke fire in the sitting room and a gas fire in the main bedroom.
The amenities were: a bathroom and toilet, a fitted kitchen, a gas-heated boiler for clothes washing, a larder cupboard, clothes drying balcony, a further balcony adjoining the living room and bedrooms (two or three in number).
Each flat had a loudspeaker fixed to the wall. There was also a switch which gave a limited choice of programmes. This was all controlled from a radio room on the roof of Kensal House, and the caretaker was the only person with control over what was listened to. While obviously there was an electrical supply to the radio room, there was no control, other than the loudspeaker in the flat.
Communal living facilities were a great step forward from the norm, with two large green lawn areas, a workshop for the men tenants, and classes for dressmaking and similar activities for the women tenants. The club activities encompassed acting, cooking, and various instructional classes for both sexes. There was a full time caretaker who kept the estate clean and tidy, and who had the additional responsibility of ensuring all children were sent home to their parents at 9 o’clock every evening.
There were two club areas on the ground floor, one for adults and one for young children, in addition there was as purpose-built nursery at the rear of the flats, which also housed a childrens’ playground.
For some unknown reason, the Gas Light and Coke Company workers were never actually housed in the flats after it was built – the property was acquired by a housing trust and let out to the poorer families of the area.
At the start of World War Two, it was decided to provide an air raid shelter for the occupants.
A decision was made to dig up the (beautiful) lawn between the front and rear block of the building (between the two club houses), and consequently a very large hole was dug out in the lawn. When the hole was some 20 to 30 feet deep, someone observed that if a German bomb hit the building, the buildings would collapse over the air raid shelter, and bury those sheltering in them. A panic-stricken authority immediately filled in the costly hole, and began to dig up the rear children’s playground where the shelters were finally constructed. While the entrances to the two shelters were filled in at the end of WW2, the actual shelters still exist under the playground.
