Decorating Lettice Street

Lettice Street was developed in the late 1880s and early 1890s as part of the extensive residential building that filled in the remaining open land between Parsons Green and Wandsworth Bridge Road. The street's name, like many in this part of Fulham, derives from figures associated with the local landed estates whose ground leases governed the pattern and quality of development. The houses were built during a period of intense speculative activity in Fulham, when the borough's transformation from a semi-rural Middlesex parish to a fully urbanised London suburb was proceeding at remarkable speed. The Metropolitan District Railway extension and the construction of new bridges across the Thames had opened Fulham to commuters, and the demand for well-built family houses at moderate rents proved insatiable throughout the 1880s and 1890s. Lettice Street's houses were designed for the lower-middle and professional classes — families with modest means but respectable aspirations, who sought the decency of a separate family house with garden in preference to the increasingly overcrowded tenements of inner London. The builders who constructed Lettice Street operated within a well-established framework of building regulations, estate covenants, and market expectations that produced houses of consistent quality, their construction methods and materials standardised through decades of metropolitan building experience. The resulting streetscape, while lacking the grand architectural pretensions of wealthier districts, possesses a coherent dignity and practical soundness that has sustained these houses through more than a century of continuous occupation.

The maintenance and decoration of Lettice Street's terraces requires an approach that balances the preservation of original materials with the practical requirements of modern occupation. The stock-brick facades should remain unpainted, their natural weathered patina being an integral part of the streetscape's character. Repointing should employ a lime mortar of appropriate softness and colour, avoiding the hard Portland cement mortars that are unfortunately common in poorly executed repairs. The red-brick dressings may require selective replacement where individual bricks have spalled, with matching salvaged bricks providing the closest match in colour, size, and surface texture. The ground-floor bay windows require particular attention, as their multiple junction points between brick, stone cill, and timber frame create opportunities for water penetration. The timber elements should be maintained with a linseed oil paint system, the cills checked annually for the back-fall that ensures rainwater drains away from the window rather than pooling against the frame. For external joinery, the late Victorian colour palette favoured earth tones: dark green, brown, or maroon for door and window frames, with lighter tones for the sash bars to provide visual contrast and maximise the apparent size of the glass. The encaustic tile entrance porches, where they survive, should be maintained with appropriate cleaning and the replacement of damaged tiles using matching reproductions. Interior lime plaster walls and ceilings benefit from breathable finishes, with modern clay paints or lime-wash providing appropriate alternatives to the distemper that would originally have been used. The simple plaster cornices should be preserved, with any repairs executed in matching lime plaster rather than modern gypsum products.