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interior design
The Queens House in
Greenwich was designed by
Inigo Jones for Anne of
Denmark, wife of James I. Built
between 1616 and 1635 in the
hunting grounds of the Tudor
palace of Placentia, it was an
essay in Joness assured handling
of Palladian style and
proportion. In contrast to the
rambling brick palace which,
spread around three courtyards,
was the haphazard enlargement
of a fifteenth-century mansion,
the Queens House was cool and
Classically ordered at the edge
of wilderness. Pevsner observes
that the buildings chastity and
bareness must have seemed as
foreign to contemporary
beholders, used to the
entertaining elaborations of
Elizabethan and Jacobean
architecture, as Modernism was
to the Edwardians.

In reality, architectural exoticism

must have been tempered by
familiar amusements, for the
house had a fantastical surprise
garden with fountains; its plan
too was diverting. The building
straddled the public road,
between London and Dover,
which divided park from palace.
In doing so, it became a
metaphorical bridge between
the safety of the palaces walled
enclosure and the dangerous
world outside (or, if you prefer,
the rational link between two
kinds of chaos: mathematical
and physical). H-shaped on plan,
the house had two parallel
wings, running east-west and
connected by a cross-bar at
first floor level, above a vaulted
basement.
Anne died in 1619 before her
house could be completed and
building was resumed by Charles

I for Henrietta Maria, for whom

the house became a garden
retreat (there was never a
kitchen). Her garden, with
formal parterres and patterns,
was designed to be viewed from
above. In consequence, the
basement (below the level of the
road) with its handsome brick
vaults and windows on to the
garden, was blocked off.
Finding the house too small,
Henrietta Maria engaged John
Webb, Joness successor and
son-in-law, to add two more
bridges to the first floor, one to
the west and one to the east.
The house we see today is a
square block. Facades on all
sides, except the south, are
tripartite with a central
projecting section and plain walls
rising from a rusticated base and
surmounted by a balustrade. On
the south side, a first floor loggia

with Ionic columns overlooked

the garden; on the north, a
horseshoe staircase leads in
Palladian manner to a terrace
and a two-storey cubic hall.
Inside the building, ornamented
rooms are disposed in
symmetrical fashion; to the east
of the great hall, the interior is
pierced by a circular void
containing the famous Tulip Stair
(the name deriving from the
repeating wrought iron pattern
of the balustrade). At the
beginning of the nineteenth
century, the building was
extended by addition of east and
west wings linked to the centre
by colonnades tracing the path
of the old road.
The present owner of the
Queens House, the National
Maritime Museum, has wanted
to use the building as a gallery.
But its curious plan and difficult

QUEENS HOUSE RESTORATION,

GREENWICH, LONDON
ARCHITECT
ALLIES & MORRISON

Fit for a queen

Remodelling of part of the Queens House, Greenwich permits its use as a gallery
and improves circulation without disturbing its seventeenth-century architecture.
74 | 1

1
North face with horseshoe
staircase to terrace.
2
North face and colonnade to east
wing. New public entrance with
stone ramp embraced by
staircase.
3
From great cubic hall, with black
and white marble floor, to new
staircase on west.

ar jan 02 allies&morrisid done

staircase elevation

plan: staircase and lift shaft

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circulation, with no disabled

access, made it unsuitable.
Wishing to stage its millennium
exhibition, The Story of Time, the
museum invited Allies and
Morrison to explore ways of
improving access in, and
circulation through, this most
sensitive of monuments without
upsetting English Heritage.
The practices solution, with
English Heritage agreement, was
to restore the basement and
transform it into a new public
entrance, and in the process to
reinstate Joness original
basement door on the north. To
the west of the great hall, in a
space previously occupied by a
contorted staircase and where
the basement vault had been
breached, they inserted an
elegant new three-storey
staircase and lift.
Design of the staircase was
based on the structural principle
of the Tulip Stair, directly
opposite on the other side of the
great hall. Treads are made of
precast concrete units, the load
being transferred vertically from
tread to tread. A steel string
bolted to the face of brick shaft
takes the torsion load and
restrains the risers. The
balustrading suggests the
sumptuousness of handmade
seventeenth-century filigree and
the purity of Joness decorative
ornamentation. It is made of steel
strips plaited into a grid which,
when wound around circular
riser sections, distorts and

echoes the geometric distortions

of the black and white marble
floor of the great hall. A
continuous bronze handrail
expresses the curve of the
staircase.
Within the basement, the
vaulted brickwork has been
covered, as it would have
originally been, with rough lime
render and the spaces made
lighter and clearer. Down here
are the reception, cloakroom,
shop and lavatories reached by
the new public entrance on the
north. Facing the river and
embraced by the horseshoe
staircase, Joness door leads to a
tunnel under the terrace. The
door was previously hidden at
the bottom of a short flight of
steps that have been replaced by
a simple stone forecourt forming
a shallow ramp. (Excavation
revealed the original brick base of
the horseshoe which turned 180
degrees so that the bottom steps
faced each other.) P. M.

QUEENS HOUSE RESTORATION,

GREENWICH, LONDON
ARCHITECT
ALLIES & MORRISON

Architect
Allies & Morrison Architects, London
Project team
Bob Allies, Di Haigh
Structural engineer
Harris & Sutherland
Services engineer
Nordale Building Services
Photographs
Peter Cook/VIEW

4
Basement enfilade.
5
New staircase: precast concrete
treads, balustrading of plaited
steel strips, continuous bronze
handrail.

first floor plan (scale approx 1:500)

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