Camden News: Strand Workhouse | Victorian | Andy Burnham | Cleveland Street | Middlesex Hospital Annexe

Publications by New Journal Enterprises

Home

Archive

Competition

Camden News - by RICHARD OSLEY
Published: 20 November 2008

The former Strand Workhouse

Pull workhouse down – just what doc ordered

A PLAN to honour a reformer of squalid Victorian workhouses has been abandoned – but some of his greatest admirers are delighted.
Culture Secretary Andy Burnham this week spiked English Heritage’s application to list the former Strand Workhouse in Cleveland Street, Bloomsbury, in honour of Dr Joseph Rogers.
It had been politely pointed out to Mr Burnham that the workhouse, which later became the Middlesex Hospital Annexe, was exactly the type of building Dr Rogers campaigned to reform. In fact, the chief medical officer at the workhouse spent his time complaining about the building’s “defects and shortcomings”.
Holborn and St Pancras MP Frank Dobson intervened, worried the listing might have blocked plans to convert the building into affordable new homes.
He said: “I agree Dr Rogers deserves recognition and hope the proposed development will celebrate his work. Dr Rogers used to say how difficult it was to provide ordinary working people with ‘decent homes at moderate rents’. The proposed housing development will do just that, so I feel confident he would have supported that rather than retaining buildings he thought were awful even by Victorian standards.”
English Heritage’s Emily Gee said in her application: “The Strand building figures significantly in an important epoch in English social history.”

Comment on this article.
(You must supply your full name and email address for your comment to be published)

Name:

Email:

Comment: