Plans for controversial new ‘art deco style’ house at Watchfield Court in Chiswick approved

Image: Aintree Lodge elevation 1

Planning permission approved after previous proposal turned down three years ago

Residents at Watchfield Court on Sutton Court Road are disappointed that planning approval has been granted for a Aintree Lodge, a two storey-house with car parking, to the rear and south of the apartment complex on Sutton Court Road in Chiswick.

“We are very, very disappointed,” Bob Freedman, who lives at Watchfield Court, told The Chiswick Calendar.

“It’s a disaster. We’re getting rid of a very attractive two bedroom cottage built at the same time as Watchfield Court. It’s so ugly, it looks like a World War II block house bunker.”

The new house will be next to a row of garages, surrounded by existing residential housing, two or three storeys high, and will replace an existing building.

An earlier application was turned down in 2022 and the developer’s appeal a year later was dismissed on the grounds that the proposed development was ‘harmful to the character and appearance of the area.’

The developer says the most recent iteration of the design addresses the issued raised by the previous one.

Image: Watchfield Court

The original Watchfield Court was built in the 1930s, a mansion block of three buildings, five storeys high, with art deco features. Four smaller blocks of three storeys surround the main blocks and were built in the late 1950s and 1960s of a similar design.

The developers say the new building has been designed ‘to be complementary to the art deco styling of the Watchfield Court Estate’, constructed in red brick and concrete, with a curved shape, but opponents say the reverse is true and the design is totally alien to the character of the site.

The Planning Committee received 56 objections from longstanding residents on the grounds of ‘harm to the appearance of the conservation area’ and ‘impact on parking and traffic on the estate’, as well as harm to neighbours from loss of light, overlooking and privacy, and disruption during the period of construction.

The committee was split, councillors voting six to four in favour of the developer.

Image: The existing building, which the new house will be replacing

Cllr Joanna Biddolph, in whose ward the Watchfield Court Estate is, told the Planning Committee the design was:

‘Out of character with the rest of the estate which is also in a conservation area, and scale. The style of the building is incongruous … the proposed building is clearly a pastiche of another art-deco design which means that it cannot possibly be described as sympathetic to the design of the estate.

‘The absence of details that are present throughout the estate, and that would tie a new building in with the estate, and the presence of new features that are absent throughout the estate, are great concern.’

Image: Plan showing where the new house will be in relation to Watchfield Court

Image: Aintree Lodge elevation 2

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