Welcome to this website for residents of the Golden Lane Estate.
Below are the links to the Crescent House and the Wider Estate sections, for you to get started.
The City of London Corporation is investing £29 million in the Golden Lane Estate to carry out repair works. In May 2023, members of its Community and Children’s Services Committee agreed the funding, which includes the refurbishment of windows, roofing, heating, ventilation, insulation, and redecoration works across all blocks on the housing estate.
The upgrades are part of the City Corporation’s Housing Major Works Programme, which includes the installation of new fire doors and sprinklers, with lighting, signage, and accessible routes upgraded.
The City Corporation is aware that climate action is required to counteract the impacts of a changing planet. The City of London Corporation is committed to reducing its contribution to the factors that cause climate change and adapting to the impact of a changing climate. As a result, our works on Golden Lane will deliver the highest standard, climate friendly refurbishments to the estate.
The Golden Lane Estate is a post-war, 1950’s social housing complex, designed by Chamberlin, Powell & Bon. Original proposals for the estate aimed to create a sustainable, self-contained community that in turn comprised a sympathetic environment, enclosed and separate from adjacent, then-derelict sites. The overall design of the estate is significant given its achievement of a viably sustainable community set within a tightly defined space. When completed, the Estate therefore became a symbol of post-war recovery.
The design was chosen following an open architectural competition in 1951 that saw 178 entries. The winning scheme comprised an 11 storey block - a deliberate landmark feature – along with a further 12, lower level blocks and a community centre. All were configured with an inward looking layout situated around a series of pedestrian courts.
In view of its importance as an example of post-war residential architecture and urban design, the Estate’s component buildings were individually listed in 1997. The Golden Lane Estate represented pioneering post-war design and structural technologies, some of which are clearly distinguishable via individual elements such as windows. Therefore the vast majority of windows utilise then-innovative, light aluminium frames, with the aluminium system in turn comprising the framework for exterior cladding panels. Internally, such a system allowed for the infiltration of natural light and/or impression of light, across all areas of individual apartments.
