Strand Union Workhouse demolition lifeline

Published: 18th November, 2010
by JOSH LOEB

A FORMER workhouse thought to have inspired Charles Dickens could be spared the wrecking ball after the government agreed to look at whether it should be protected on heritage grounds.

The Strand Union Workhouse in Cleveland Street, Fitzrovia, does not have listed status and there are plans to convert the block into shops, offices and new homes.

But owners University College London Hospital were told this week that the decision not to list it had been placed under review.

The Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) confirmed the case would be re-opened.

English Heritage, the conservation body, said it was “moving swiftly” to persuade the department that there is new evidence of the historic significance of the building, which was built in the 1770s and which campaigners say inspired parts of Dickens’s novel Oliver Twist.

The workhouse is also deemed important because the medical officer attached to it, Dr Joseph Rogers, campaigned against harsh conditions for the urban poor.

Labour MP Frank Dobson has previously argued that saving the building in Dr Rogers’s name would be an insult to his work against workhouse abuse.

But medical historian Ruth Richardson called the DCMS’s announcement “absolutely wonderful”.

She said: “Had the DCMS said, ‘no we won’t look at this again’, we’d be lost. Now we’ll have to see how it goes, but there is obviously real enthusiasm for this building.”

A petition against the proposed demolition has been signed by hundreds of people including the actors Simon Callow and Griff Rhys Jones as well as TV historian Dan Cruickshank.

Mr Cruickshank said the site could be converted into flats without having to demolish the building.

A spokesman for UCLH said last week: “Planning approval for the new hospital required us to provide a much-needed social housing development in Fitzrovia and, after many years of negotiation, it was agreed that it should be located on this site. We have consulted the local community and were pleased that the vast majority of people supported our plans.”

In light of the DCMS’s announcement, the New Journal contacted the hospital again but a spokesman said they had no further comments at this stage. 

The Strand Union Workhouse is on the borough boundary with Westminster but comes under the jurisdiction of Camden Council, which has not yet set a date to hear UCLH’s application.