A good third of houses in England are semi-detached. Buildings of this type started to be built in the nineteenth century and in the twentieth century, especially during the inter-war years, there was a veritable explosion of semi-detached buildings thanks to the expansion of the London underground and the desire of many families to move away from unhealthy areas of the city centre to the new suburbs arising in the green countryside.

In London’s suburbs such as Harrow, Pinner, and Surbiton, the streets are lined with semi-detached houses from the 1930s, one similar to the other, and built in the style known as ‘tudorbethan’ alluding to sixteenth century fashions.

In the Kingsbury area, however, there are often bizarre variants of this model that deserve an exploration on foot, as we did on a fresh but sunny day last week.

There are two main areas for these discoveries. The first is near Saint Andrew’s church, Kingsbury:

The main area, however, is north of Kingsbury Green, off Buck Lane:

Note how the semis are united with curious and sometimes monumental stairways, and how the facades are a varied ‘tudorbethan’ style with half-timbered gables transmuted by abstruse towers, extravagant walls, and unexpected asymmetries. The clinker-built wooden walls with irregularly finished planks, the occasional use of thatched roofs and the leaded glass windows are further characteristic features.

Who was the architect who provided this impetus against uniformity and, let’s face it, monotony of nineteen-thirties semi-detached streets that characterize so much of the suburban panorama of English cities?

Ernest George Trobridge (1884–1942) was an architect active in the first half of the twentieth century, especially in the north-western outskirts of London. Trobridge was a supporter of the ‘New Church’, based on the thought of the Swedish philosopher and mystic Swedenborg, and it may have been his religious beliefs that led him to be interested in building houses for the working classes.

Trobridge embarked on his first work in the 1920s, when new homes were needed for ex-servicemen returning from the front after a terrible war. Brick was in short supply, so he used elm wood that was readily available at the time and built cheap houses with framed, panelled frames and thatched roofs in the London suburb of Kingsbury and the village of Chaldon in Surrey. These properties were technically very innovative: the green elm was cut in a special way so that it could contain its shrinkage and the straw had a patented fire-proof system.

In the 1930s, bricks became more readily available and the pressure on land around London indicated that the working class needed flats rather than houses. Trobridge developed condominiums with the appearance of romantic ‘cottages’, or baronial castles, most of which were built in Kingsbury. Here are some we spotted at the crossroads between Highfield Avenue and Buck Lane

Following his socialist beliefs, Trobridge employed disabled employees and insisted on paying union dues to all his employees. In addition, he was a vegetarian and showed an ecological attitude towards the planet reflecting current trends.

For many years Trobridge’s imaginative houses, built for ‘our heroes’, were underestimated by architects and the public alike and could be bought for a minimal sum. In recent years, however, their prices have risen a lot. This house, for example, has recently been sold for over a million pounds.

Cheaper is this apartment, with four bedrooms and a garden, which was sold for just £ 425,000 the other week.

It was fun to wander through the otherwise unremarkable streets of Kingsbury and spot a Trobridge-designed house. I doubt that otherwise Kingsbury attracts many tourists.

Trobridge’s work may not be a major reason for visiting London. However, his architecture has more relevance for those of us who do not live in palaces or castles. Being a tenant of a Trobridgian villa, at least could make us dream of these other residences!