‘We’ve saved the Strand Union Workhouse!’ - Cleveland Street building said to have inspired Dickens’ Oliver Twist is granted listed status

Published: 18 March 2011
by JOSH LOEB

A FORMER workhouse building that is believed to have been the inspiration for Charles Dickens’ novel Oliver Twist has been “saved” from demolition.

The Strand Union Workhouse in Cleveland Street, Fitzrovia, has been the subject of a three-year battle between owners University College London Hospital (UCLH) and heritage campaigners desperate for it to be preserved. UCLH had planned to pull it down and use the site for new social housing.

This week the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) granted the property Grade II-listed status – making it much harder for any demolition to go ahead.

The decision followed a report by English Heritage which recommended awarding protection.

Heritage minister John Penrose said the building was an “eloquent reminder of one of the grimmer aspects of London’s 18th century social history”.

Built in the 1770s, the workhouse was the final port of call for many desperately poor inhabitants of Fitzrovia in Georgian and Victorian times. 

Mothers unable to afford to bring up children abandoned babies at the doors of the building – the orphans would then be given accommodation and hard labour. 

At the back of the workhouse is a burial ground containing an estimated 1,000 bodies. The young Charles Dickens lived nearby.

On Tuesday campaigners from the Cleveland Street Workhouse Group celebrated outside the building, calling the DCMS decision “a victory in a David and Goliath battle”. 

Dr Ruth Richardson, who has written a book about Dr Joseph Rogers, the Victorian reformist who campaigned to improve workhouse conditions, said: “It’s been a fantastic result. We hope now that the site’s owners will respect the old building’s fabric and its consecrated burial ground.” 

Historian Peter Higginbotham, who runs the website www.workhouses.org, said he was “absolutely delighted” the building had been listed and said he hoped its history would be marked by a plaque or even a museum. 

He added: “I can’t speak for the group as a whole, but personally I think it would be a fantastic site for a museum. Whether the owners would countenance that I don’t know. I’m just struck by the fact that of the hundreds of museums in London, there’s not a single one dedicated to the history of the poor.” 

A spokesman for UCLH said: “We are convinced that this location is appropriate to provide much-needed social housing to support the regeneration of the Fitzrovia area and are working with English Heritage, Camden Council and our advisers to find a solution which will be agreeable to the planning authorities.”