549 Lordship Lane

549 Lordship Lane, also known as the Concrete House, is a house on Lordship Lane in East Dulwich, close to the junction with Underhill Road and opposite St Peter's Church. The Gothic Revival house is an early example of a modern domestic dwelling constructed of concrete. It became a grade II listed building in 1994. The house may have been designed by Charles Barry Jr. (1823-1900) (son of Sir Charles Barry who worked on the Houses of Parliament), possibly as a rectory or parsonage to accompany his Gothic style St Peter's Church on the opposite other side of Lordship Lane. It was built in 1873 by Charles Drake of the Patent Concrete Building Company, and it may have been his own house. Drake had taken out a patent in 1867 for the use of iron panels for shuttering, in place of the usual timber. The mass concrete construction anticipates modern slip form methods, with bare concrete around the windows resembling stone, and surface patterning in other areas resembling pebbledash, with an effect similar to béton brut. It is believed that the house is the only surviving example in England. It was made from Portland cement with "burnt ballast" (clay) aggregate, without reinforcement, faced with mortar and render. The house has an L-shape plan, with two storeys and an attic. The ground floor has canted bays on the two principal façades, to the south west and south east, with pointed arched windows, and gabled porch in the return angle on the south west elevation. There are further pointed arched windows on the first floor, and square headed windows on the north west and north east elevations. The steeply pitched slate roof has projecting gables, topped by three large concrete chimneys. The house was sold three years after it was completed, and passed through the hands of many owners. It suffered bomb damage in the Second World War, but survived plans to replace it in the 1950s with a petrol filling station or residential flats, or in the 1970s with a nursery, or in the…