Architect Charles Canning Winmill (1865-1945) designed some of the loveliest of the Boundary Street Estate blocks when the Old Nichol was demolished – Molesey (1896), Clifton (1897), Laleham and Hedsor (both 1898).

In 1900, Winmill, along with his boss, Owen Fleming, who had been in overall charge of the building of the Estate, moved from the Housing Department of the London County Council to its Fire Stations department. This is why the Euston Road fire station (below) looks so like Boundary, as do the Swiss Cottage fire station in Eton Avenue/Grove Road (1915), and Perry Vale in Forest Hill, south-east London (1902). (Winmill’s Red Cross Street station in Barbican is no longer standing.)

In the spring of 1941, Winmill wrote in a letter to his friend, Lady Jane Ferrers, a beautiful passage about revisiting London after a long time – and his feelings on walking through the devastation of the latest war damage:

“This was in the nature of a pilgrimage to stricken London. You remember I went to Newgate Street, Christ’s Hospital, when I was ten – just 66 years ago. Later, I was articled in the City and spent many years in the service of London as a public servant, so I entered into the parts that had been devastated, as into the almost passion of the town, its suffering and its bravery. . . I was thoroughly nerved by the time I got near my old school, and, as I stood in front of Christ’s Church Passage, all I could see was the spire of the church standing, and the shell of the church.

“Then I turned, and this time saw, for the first time in my life, St Paul’s from Newgate Street; if no one had been there I should have gone down on my knees. There was a sort of mist and smoke, and perhaps dust, but faintly above the cross and the dome were what seemed two eyes – these I at last made out to be the bright points on [anti-aircraft] balloons.

“On towards Holborn, going west, I passed many places damaged. By this time it had become a sort of exaltation, and so throughout the day. If one could stand what I had seen, one could stand anything.”

Lady Jane replied: “Oh how I loved what you said of St Paul’s. I too have a war vision, from the top of a bus. Suddenly the ball and cross high in what one must call ‘the empyrean’ – brilliant sun, and all around a thickish fog. So immutable it looked to me, and so it must have done to you – all the more for wandering through devastation as you did. What a dream walk!”

Further reading: Joyce M Winmill, Charles Canning Winmill: An Architect’s Life by his Daughter (1946)
A picture of the Swiss Cottage fire station can be seen at http://474towin.blogspot.co.uk/2008/06/from-look-out-to-full-blown-fire.html
Of Perry Vale at http://www.sydenhamsociety.com/2010/11/a-history-of-perry-vale-fire-station/
And a selection of shots of the lost Red Cross Street station are on the gallery section of the London Fire Brigade website https://www.london-fire.gov.uk/about-us/services-and-facilities/media-resources/photo-library/