Jenifer Milner tells the story of an estate that’s worth a climb and has parliamentary heritage Champion Hill, at the very top of Camberwell, physically and, some think, socially as well, contains a variety of properties
Those who survive the climb may have glanced through the screen of trees and shrubs at the end and noticed a splendid stretch of lawn. And an attractive collection of modern Georgian homes. This is Langford Green.
As the elegantly calligraphed plaque on the side of the small lodge indicates, the estate was built in 1968, by Colonel Claude Granville Lancaster (1899-1977) on the last parcel of the once extensive land his family had long owned from the Hill down to the Green.
Colonel Lancaster’s maternal grandfather was Sir Claude Champion de Crespigny, of Huguenot origin. Today, Champion Hill thus continues to remind us of the family’s name as does De Crespigny Park lower down.
However, the name came from another property the family owned in Essex. Claude Lancaster had been a British Army officer, a coal industry director, a country squire and a longstanding
Conservative MP first for Fylde (1938-50) and then South Fylde (1950-1970). He was educated at Eton and the Royal Military College at Sandhurst. After rising to the rank of captain in the Royal
Horse Guards he was made an honorary colonel of the Sherwood Foresters; his 9th Foresters was one of the last units to be evacuated from Dunkirk in 1940.
In 1948 he married Nancy Tree, niece of Nancy Astor, who founded the English country house look, and transformed the decor of Lancaster’s family seat, Kelmarsh Hall in Northants. The couple divorced in 1953.
In view of Nancy’s passion for elegant style, it’s not surprising that Lancaster took great care over the design of Langford Green. He gave a maisonette to his House of Commons secretary Freda Ruthven. She told me that Lancaster consulted his friend, Sir Albert Richardson, then president of the Royal Academy and an authority on Georgian architecture.
Langford Green was to be Lancaster’s legacy to Camberwell and its style with its fine Georgian townhouses. He and Richardson planned the estate as a model community housing 45 properties in seven blocks of varying size, surrounded by generous areas of lawns, mature trees and shrubberies. Hence it offers an unusual range of accommodation from three-bedroomed houses and maisonettes to two and three-bedroomed apartments plus one-bed flats beneath the maisonettes, originally intended for an older parent or au pair, so, ideally catering for all ages.
It was aimed at professional classes and recommended by Lancaster as a sitting MP for its proximity to Westminster (the Victoria Tower is in clear view from Champion Hill). Indeed, until recently a number of residents worked in various roles at the House of Commons.
After Lancaster’s death, the estate was sold off to a succession of commercial landlords and became neglected.
In 2005, the then owners, Simmons Stein, offered to sell the freehold to the estate’s 30 leaseholders under the Right of First Refusal. Thus in 2009, 20 leaseholders invested their savings to purchase the freehold — and the estate is now owned and run by residents.
