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Peter Sowray |
Pioneer’s grandchildren plea to save historic health centre
HE was the firebrand mayor behind the creation of Finsbury Health Centre – but 70 years on, Alderman Harold Riley’s grandchildren have joined a campaign to save the building from developers.
The Grade I-listed centre, a masterpiece of modernist architecture designed by Berthold Lubetkin, faces closure because NHS Islington cannot afford to refurbish it.
Mr Riley’s grandchildren, Peter Sowray and Tracy Riley, have posted messages of support on the Save Finsbury Health Centre campaign website. Ms Riley, from Staines, said: “It is a travesty to destroy not only a facility to help the recovery from illness – but also a piece of history.
“This is the start of what later became the National Health Service. Maybe this will also be sold off to make way for private healthcare which working class people can ill afford.”
From a family of Black Country miners, Mr Riley became a teacher and later Mayor of Finsbury in the build-up to the Second World War.
Mr Sowray, 50, said: “He died when I was in my teens, but I remember in his house he had these little mementos from his time in Finsbury. He had a silver salver engraved with Ove Arup [builders of the health centre] on his wall. To my regret, I never asked him about those things.”
Mr Sowray said he visited the centre for the first time last month. He said: “I was amazed by the vision of the place – to start from a blank piece of paper and do that. It must have been enormously uplifting to the people at the time.”
“You go to the health centre and see what an utter state of disrepair it’s in. You do wonder who is looking after patients. My suspicion is that this decision has been made by accountants.”
John Allan, Lubetkin’s biographer, said it was “Riley’s enthusiasm”, backed by the chairman of the public health committee, Dr Chuni Lal Katial, that was “the driving force behind the health centre’s creation” in 1937.
The future of the centre is being debated by councillors and health chiefs at a series of Town Hall meetings. Former Islington South Labour MP Lord Smith will speak at the next session at 6pm on October 14. |
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