Parties united in last-gasp bid to halt closure of Ada Lewis House in Holloway

Published: 15 October, 2010
by PETER GRUNER

A LAST-ditch move has been launched to save a historic 80-room housing block for single women in Holloway.

Lib Dem councillor Tracy Ismail, with support from the ruling Labour majority at the Town Hall, has urged Southern Housing to reconsider its decision to close Ada Lewis House in Dalmeny Avenue.

A full Islington Council meeting heard last week that the decision to close the building and turn it into family homes – first reported in the Tribune in August – had already been made and that the remaining 15 residents would be rehoused. The house is named after Ada Lewis, a campaigner for social housing who founded a hostel on the site 100 years ago so single women could find a safe and affordable home in London.

Tenants include pensioners, students and people with mental illness and disability.

Cllr Ismail said that the building had provided a perfect refuge for single women who could not afford high rents. 

“It served an invaluable purpose and once it’s gone we’ll get nothing to replace it,” she said. “As far as I know the women will be rehoused but a lot of them don’t want to go. They want to stay as they are.”

Ada Lewis was the wife of Samuel Lewis, whose bequest led to the founding of Samuel Lewis Housing Trust, which became Southern Housing Group in 2001.

Samuel Lewis left the equivalent of £30million to the Ada Lewis Trust, a charity created after the death of his wife, a wealthy Jewish philanthropist who was concerned about the lack of decent housing for single, low-waged working women.

The building opened before the First World War and was rebuilt in the 1940s. For about 100 years women have used it as a safe base and a foothold in the capital.

Tenants, who share bathrooms and kitchens were told the building was too expensive to refurbish and they must leave.

The block’s women wardens have already gone and some long-standing tenants have packed their bags.

Two other Ada Lewis homes in London, founded at the same time as the one in Dalmeny Avenue, have been shut in the past two years.