121 and 123 Tyers Street, Vauxhall, SE11 5HS

This is an interesting terrace, just to the East of Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens.

The terrace house on the left has a terracotta plaque let into the brickwork:

A HOUSE FOR NICARAGUA
Built 1984-91 to celebrate 
the Nicaraguan Revolution  
Sold to support community projects in Nicaragua

The website “Radical Lambeth” has an article which tells more. The house was restored as a community endeavour, led by a visionary, Ron Tod (sometimes spelled Todd):

“He had some money from a house he had built out of an old airfield shed in Essex, and he thought some of the people he was living with might help with the work. About 200 people – men and women in their twenties and thirties did…”

“Almost all the materials for 121 Tyers Street came from skips, building sites or dumps. The floors are parquet, retrieved in one great haul from a skip….”

Even from the outside, the house is feels beautiful. The windows are all different, and there is intriguing detail, such as the terracotta frieze above the window shown in my picture. This is a house built to a loose design rather than a rigid plan. Much was created by the people there, as they went along, using materials to hand. Sketching it, I was reminded of the work of the 1970s radical architect Christopher Alexander, “A Pattern Language”.

The house in the centre of my picture is 123 Tyers Street. This is much plainer. But it also is intriguing. The lower windows are not directly below the upper windows, but shifted right.

I sketched sitting on the wall opposite.