Brewery Square is the most dramatic and extensive of the developments in the Clerkenwell area. It is all grey and zinc with huge architectural offices on the ground floors of the buildings and a beautiful flat development scheme above.
This was the site of the Cannon Brewery, founded in 1720 by two brothers, Samuel and Rivers Dickinson. Beer was still being produced here until 1955 when Allied Lyons turned it into a distillery and a warehouse.
When the developers moved in, all the old buildings were demolished, except for the red-brick buildings on your right as you enter through the main street gates. They were originally the brewery’s counting house – the Victorian equivalent of today’s accounts department – and they were built in 1893 by a local builder, Thomas Elkington of Golden Lane. (You can see heads of barley and hops carved above the doorways,)
The site seems to have passed through many hands: Media Offices in 1998, then Barratt Developments, and finally Berkeley Homes. Several architects have been involved. Hamilton Associates were the main architects. (They also designed No. 100 St John Street as an office building in 1990, so they seem to have had a local presence.) GML Architects got the planning permission. Eachus Huckson did the landscaping, such as it is. Erick van Egraat, a Dutch architect, was involved in the commercial properties.
There are 261 homes in all: 198 private flats (from one to three bedrooms in size), 6 mews houses (from two to three bedrooms in size), and 57 ‘affordable housing’ flats which were separately designed and built by Southern Housing Group.
You come into Brewery Square through a large arched entrance and double gates at No. 156-162 St John Street. These were originally offices and caretakers’ accommodation. The building was designed by William Bradford and Sons and built in 1894-5.
Brewery Square itself is laid with York stone cobbles in attractively non-recurring patterns. In the centre is an oval flowerbed in stone. It’s a shame they have not done more about the planting, because the flowerbeds seem to be full of insect-nibbled bushes. The idea was for this courtyard to be a central piazza, with its own café, restaurant, shops and gallery. We’ll see. (Architects always believe their estate will create a bustling community. The reality is that homeowners usually look to the outside world for their social life.)
There is an underground car park with entrances at the edges of the estate. The town houses are off to the right, grouped round a small semi-enclosed square to the south of the other buildings. Most of the flats are in the main blocks encircling Brewery Square, each with commercial premises on the ground floor and flats above. The gaps between the buildings give pedestrians easy access to and from the square from the streets on the northern side and at the back of the complex.
There are four main blocks, going clockwise from the St John Street entrance: Gardner Court (named after Henry Gardner a neighbouring brewer who took Cannon Brewery over when the Dickinson family went bust in 1827), Cannon Court, Horseshoe Court (named after the Horseshoe public house which was here before the brewery), and Dickinson Court (named after the founders, Samuel and Rivers Dickinson). Dickinson Court also opens onto Brewhouse Yard.
The buildings have a basic concrete-frame construction. The ground floors have the usual all-glass look you expect of business premises. When you look into the offices you just see huge ranks of desks for the workers.
The flats, however, are strikingly – startlingly – original in appearance. There are projecting balcony boxes at all levels – nothing so original there – but these are dramatic balconies, glazed and clad in copper and zinc panels and screens. They look literally to be metal boxes. No wonder they won a whole handful of architectural awards for this development. The whole ensemble looks like a series of complicated boxes placed on top of each other and, in fact, they were pre-cast modular units, surfaced in copper zinc and glass, made off-site and then just fitted together on site.
If you venture through further, you come out into Brewhouse Yard. In fact, the postal address for several of the blocks is Brewhouse Yard rather than Brewery Square, and you may find either name being used in agents’ details. (Cannon Court is No. 5, Horseshoe Court is No. 11, and Dickinson Court is No. 15 Brewhouse Yard; but Gardner Court is No. 1 Brewery Square.)
No. 16 Brewhouse Yard, the huge red building at the rear, was originally the fermenting house for the brewery. It was also designed by the Bradfords and built 1895-1898. It’s now used as offices.
