Founded as a medieval monastery, Charterhouse developed into a school and almshouse arranged around a series of collegiate quadrangles in London’s Clerkenwell. Our two new residential buildings occupy parts of the complex damaged by bombs during the second world war, and in doing so, restore a sense of enclosure to the central Preacher's Court.

The larger, rectangular building provides 12 flats on three floors. The smaller one is square on plan and houses two flats above a small library. Together, the new buildings define the southwest corner of the Court, which mainly dates from the 1820s. In doing so, they conceal views of the untidy backs of neighbouring buildings and the zig-zag boundary wall, which were exposed by the war time bomb damage.

Both new buildings have arcades in response to the rest of the Court and are constructed with walls of solid, load bearing English bond brick. Structural brick flat arches form the cloisters and window openings. Upper windows are mostly uniform in height but range in width from narrow, frameless slits to generous projecting bays large enough to sit in.

Sheltered by the cloisters, the ground floor enclosing wall is a timber-framed partition clad in naturally-finished oak panelling. The panelling continues on the interior walls of the residential accommodation, where it is has been painted. In the larger building, lift and stair cores are lit by glass roof lights and treated like exterior spaces, with fair-face brick walls and steel-framed lift shafts infilled with stack-bonded brickwork.

Accompanying improvements to the surrounding external landscaping include York stone pavements and bonded gravel vehicle routes.