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AA Membership is organizing a tour of the house 19 North End for the AA Members on May 9.  This tour will be led by AA PHD candidate Emmanouil Stravakis, as a follow up to his lecture on Michael Ventris held at the AA in February.

19 North End is a small, charming, post-war house in Hampstead. Michael and Lois Ventris, both AA graduates, designed and built the house for themselves between 1951 and 1953. The house is built on the northwest side of Hampstead Heath and it was designed while Michael Ventris was ‘enclosed’ in his High Point flat trying to solve the mystery of the Linear B script. Michael Ventris finally deciphered Linear B in July 1952 to the amazement of the scholarly world.

19 North End, in Mark Girouard’s words,  ‘has an unassuming and un-ostentatious character carried to almost extreme limits: here are no flat or butterfly roofs, fancy woods or walls of glass, but a variant on the traditional rectangular two-storeyed house with a gabled roof, carried out in plain yellow London stock brick. On a superficial view it could be dismissed as a commonplace house; but the excellence of its finish and materials, the fastidiousness of its detailing and the carefulness of its planning combine to make it more worth study than many flashier buildings.’ – Girouard, Mark. “Keeping the Children Under”. Country Life 12 November (1959): 830-831.

Emmanouil Stavrakakis is an architect. He is a Ph.D. Candidate at the Architectural Association, thesis title, ‘The Architecture of Linear B’, (Director of Studies, Mark Cousins, Supervisor, Spyros Papapetros). For his Ph.D. he is receiving funding by the Alexander S. Onassis Public Benefit Foundation and by the Greek State Scholarships Foundation (IKY). His also received the Michael Ventris Award in Architecture for his research in 2011.

Image: Michael and Lois Ventris card, courtesy of AA Archives.