Blake's Cottages, Park Lane, Croydon

Jones works in watercolour, using gentle, restrained strokes that blend tones rather than define hard edges. The limited palette of greys, muted greens and subtle earth tones creates a subdued mood, while the delicate handling of light suggests a quiet, early‑morning or overcast setting.

Created under the Recording Britain scheme, the piece was commissioned to document structures at risk from urban expansion and wartime damage. The project, organized by Sir Kenneth Clark and funded by the Pilgrim Trust, engaged artists across England, Wales and Scotland to produce a visual archive of threatened sites.

During World War II, the Recording Britain initiative sought to preserve images of the nation’s architectural and landscape heritage before it could be altered by bombing or post‑war redevelopment. Jones’s depiction of Blake’s Cottages fits within this broader effort to capture a disappearing built environment.

The watercolour remains part of the Recording Britain collection, serving as a historical record of Croydon’s suburban fabric in the early 1940s. It offers scholars and the public a reference point for studying mid‑century domestic architecture and the wartime cultural response to preservation.