Queen's Gate Living
Atherstone Mews
Atherstone Mews runs from Queen’s Gate Gardens to Cromwell Road. It is quite a contrast. Instead of the huge buildings on the main roads, you find yourself on the set for a BBC ‘period’ drama with a colourful collection of very individual houses on either side of an attractively cobbled street. In fact, when you look closer you realise that it must have been built as two facing terraces of more or less identical houses, judging by the prominent dentilled cornice which runs along the tops of most of the houses’ facades and joins them architecturally. But time and home owners have done their work. Stable doors have been replaced, doors and windows have been put in or altered.
The houses are on two storeys, although some have pitched roofs containing attic rooms. There are no basements and, as usual for mews houses, the main door opens straight onto the street. Generally speaking there are three windows on the first floor above a window, a garage door and a main door on the ground floor.
The brick-faced facades are mainly painted in different colours: one house in striking blue. Some houses still have bare brick facades or are painted only at ground floor level. Features such as lamps and window boxes add to the individual feel of this mews. The windows are an attractive feature. They have a very slight convex arch, which required some care and expertise by the bricklayers, so it seems that this was always intended to be a cut above the usual servants’ quarters.
It is wide enough for cars to be parked outside houses. Cars can drive both ways, without inhibiting the occasional flower pot or plant trough. It is quite convenient for shops in Gloucester Road. It is mainly residential but with some commercial premises. The houses are overlooked at the back by the large buildings on Queen’s Gate Gardens.
