31 Madingley Road

[3][9][10] Twelve Modernist houses in the town, mainly in the west, dating to the interwar period are listed in a 1996 gazetteer;[11] the earliest – White House, on the north side of Madingley Road at the junction with Conduit Head Road, designed by George Checkley for himself – dates from 1930–31 and is an example of a concrete-framed Cubist construction drawing direct inspiration from Le Corbusier's work in France.

[2][17] Lawrence's brief referred to "Mason Citron" (Maison Citrohan), Le Corbusier's plan for a family house, and requested a garage, central heating and accommodation for the maid with separate access.

[2] Lawrence considered that the traditional building material and the expense would be factors promoting St John's approval of the design.

[3] The family did not remain at 31 Madingley Road; in 1951 Lawrence took up a post in the Gold Coast and on his return to the UK, lived in Yorkshire.

[3][21] Immediately behind number 31 is 1 Wilberforce Road, a single-storey house built in 1965,[20][22] behind which the University of Cambridge's new Centre for Mathematical Sciences was completed in around 2002.

[23] Two houses on Wilberforce Road dating from before the Second World War are Modernist in style, numbers 9 (Dora Cosens; 1937) and 19 (H. C. Hughes; 1933–34).

[11][22] 31 Madingley Road now stands opposite some of the original accommodation blocks of Churchill College, which are listed at grade II.

[25] The historian Matthew Sturgis describes the building as a "stylish essay in brick", with a "long, low" profile that he considers relates to Sisson's view that "modern architecture [draws] its energy from the horizontal".

[18] The front (north) façade has an asymmetrically placed inset entrance reached by two shallow brick steps, which is surmounted by a plain horizontal canopy, significantly wider than the doorway.

[1][26] Vertically above the entrance, a series of horizontal cast stone bands of the same width as the doorway run up to the base of the second storey.

[1][27] The long series of repeated windows with uniform spacing is typical of Sisson's style in both Modernist and traditional buildings.

[1][27] The garden (south) front has an uninterrupted series of ten similar windows at the first-floor level, again surmounted by a long continuous three-banded lintel.