West End Letters: Strand Union Workhouse

Publications by New Journal Enterprises

Home

Archive

Competition

West End Extra - LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Published: 12 December 2008

Politics of the workhouse

• I WAS disappointed to read Frank Dobson’s view that the Strand Union workhouse in Cleveland Street (constructed in 1778) was not worth retaining, on the grounds that it was “awful, even by Victorian standards”.
There are few Old Poor Law (that is, pre-1834) workhouse buildings left in London, and indeed they are comparatively scarce in the United Kingdom, and as well as being an interesting rarity in their own right they can act as an educational aid to help us to comprehend the conditions experienced by so many of our forebears.
They are ideas made physical in bricks and mortar, and it is a shame that, as a man of the left, Mr Dobson cannot see their educational and historical worth.
If we were to tear down all the buildings that we consider were built with inhumane intention, to carry out policies that we today think barbarous, London’s physical fabric would be the poorer.
The Tower of London, home to centuries of murder, torture and political suppression, would have to be the first to go, if true awfulness were the main criterion.
The collapse of the Noho Square project means that there is a huge vacant site almost diagonally opposite the former workhouse (where the rather wonderful Middlesex Hospital building stood until a few weeks ago).
This space could accommodate many more units of low-cost housing than the workhouse site would permit.
SARAH WISE
University Street, WC1

Send your letters to: The Letters Editor, West End Extra, 40 Camden Road, London, NW1 9DR or email to letters@westendextra.co.uk. The deadline for letters is midday Wednesday. The editor regrets that anonymous letters cannot be published, although names and addresses can be withheld.
Please include a full name, postal address and telephone number.
Letters may be edited for reasons of space.

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

Name:

Email:

Comment: