Ropemakers Field is a terrace of 11 townhouses located within the Limehouse Conservation Area at the entrance to Ropemakers Field Park. Rejecting the conventional front-and-rear garden format of eighteenth-century townhouses, the development explores vertical layering of amenity space. Each dwelling is marked by a filigree of flitched timber ‘gate houses,’ creating small ground-level courts that lead to piano nobile living areas, culminating in framed views of the River Thames and Canary Wharf Towers.

The composition of the façades responds to the listed Georgian terrace on Narrow Street opposite. Simple brick walls are complemented by stained timber entrance structures, rooftop pergolas, and two-storey framed window panels, creating a nuanced interplay of materiality and form.

The project investigates thresholds and sequences between public and private realms, reconsidering traditional domestic typologies in response to inner-city site constraints, remediation requirements, and the need for higher densities. The design balances urban living with quiet spaces for reflection and retreat.

Key elements include carefully assembled flitched timber pergolas, large prefabricated joinery for two-storey windows, and a mix of recessed and pronounced frame sections across the north and south elevations.

“…this smallish 1996 development in Narrow Street, Limehouse has probably had more impact on volume house building form in the UK than any other architecture of the past ten years. It is one of few first major commissions for an architect to have been visited by a ‘who’s who?’ of house builders.” — David Birkbeck, Director of Design for Homes