St. Clement's Hospital

This issues of overcrowding and overpriced housing in this part of London is nothing new.

The London Corporation of the Poor was first established in 1647, under An Act for the better Relief of the Poor of this Kingdom, with the expressed purpose of helping local communities help themselves to find work and shelter. Looking to the East, The City of London saw the multitude of health problems and the further social concerns that poor housing caused – such as family breakdown and lasting unemployment – and looked to provide an opportunity for members of the local community to help themselves. A new workhouse, catering for up to 800 residents, was built on the south side of Bow Road in 1848-9, opening in the December of 1849.

Today, London Citizens pays its respects to this noble tradition and is fighting to revive it through a new, innovative and dynamic housing proposal which will see the Mayor of London, the City and the historic outpost of Tower Hamlets come together to provide perpetual, affordable home ownership for some of London’s lowest paid working families.

The palatial design by Richard Tress cost over £55,000 to construct and boasted central heating, a dining-hall measuring 100 feet by 50 feet, Siberian marble pillars and a chapel with stained glass windows. At the time, it was simply known as the Bow Road Workhouse. Then, in 1869, the City of London Union, the East London Union, and the West London Union were amalgamated to form an enlarged City of London Union. The new union took over the former East London Union workhouse at Homerton, and the former West London Union workhouse on Cornwallis Road in Upper Holloway. The Bow Road site became the union's infirmary, caring for the sick and mentally ill. By May 1936, the site had stood as a pillar of the local community, catering for the local poor, for 99 years. The option then arose, as it has today, to close the institute and to sell it off into private hands for monetary gain. But the decision was made to keep the land in public ownership: paid for and constructed through forethought and public benevolence, and an icon in the local area, it was thought unfit to lose such a noble history of social investment and such necessary local support. The site was thus transformed into a hospital, an exclusively psychiatric unit, caring for the locally infirm and renamed St. Clement's.

The site survived major bomb damage in 1944 during the war, but went on to become part of the NHS and London Hospital in 1968. On the introduction of the National Health Service, the Hospital was taken over by the Bow Hospital Management Committee, which was replaced in 1974 by the Tower Hamlets Health District. Then, following a move of services to a new purpose-built complex at the Mile End Hospital in Bancroft Road in October 2005, the glorious red gates on the front of Bow Road closed once more.

They have been closed ever since.

London CITIZENS communities have been organising for a community land trust since 2002, when an agreement to explore the possibility of using the Olympic Park site after the Games was signed with the 2012 bid team. When the bid was successful, the ODA, LDA and London 2012 team made it clear that they wished to see an operating pilot scheme in a urban UK location before they would take the plan forward. London CITIZENS subsequently petitioned the Mayor’s Office to release land through the LDA to enable this to happen. Mayor Livingstone's response was to announce that he would bring a scheme forward through Tower Hamlets Borough Council. The site proposed was that of Bow Lock. But after a number of years and an eventual change in Mayoral administration, THBC could not come to an agreement with the LDA over the release of the site. The proposed CLT at Bow is now all but dead.

London CITIZENS responded proactively to the delays. A meeting of its membership and local residents in Stratford in November 2008 set out the community's ever increasing need. The meeting reviewed and debated five possible sites, for which they proposed to assemble a bid team to pursue on their behalf. After much discussion and resident participation, the meeting unanimously voted in favour of pursuing the former site of St. Clement’s Hospital, Mile End. The reasons for this were fourfold:
 
  1) The site is a prominent landmark within the East End; is of significance to our membership, our residents and our local institutions; and has served the interests of the working poor
  since its conception as a workhouse in 1859.
  2) The local community is, and has been since 2002, organised and vocal in its need for affordable housing in the area, and for it to be revitalised through a form of community ownership.
  Twelve prominent local institutions – including Central Foundation School for Girls (directly opposite the site) the East London Mosque, Queen Mary University and local churches –
  had lead this campaign and all had a shared interest in this site given its proximity.
  3) The site was recently acquired by the HCA, whose expressed remit is to: “to be an open and accessible organisation, working with others on a collaborative and consultative basis…
  to create thriving communities and affordable homes.”
  4) Mayor Boris Johnson, Richard Blakeway, Sir Bob Kerslake and David Lunts have all vowed to use the HCA as the vehicle through which they will bring one CLT into existence during
  this spending round (ending 2011).

After deciding upon the proposed site, the local community embarked upon a series of consultation and engagement exercises that have rooted support for the idea deep within the fabric of the local community:
During June 2008, London CITIZENS organisers in east London undertook over 300 personal one-to-one meetings with people in local institutions, in which the project was discussed, refined and gained considerable input and local support.A steering group of local community representatives was formed, which attempted throughout the spring and summer of 2009 to establish contact with the Homes and Communities Agency. When this proved unfruitful, the Mayor of London was propositioned at a London CITIZENS meting of over 2,000 people at the Barbican in November at which he pledged to look seriously at the proposal.Queen Mary University, through its Geography department students, commissioned an in-depth study of the local area – whereby it met with parents from Central Foundation School in their homes, and parishioners from St Mary’s Church, Cable Street – to ask them specifically about the community partnerships proposals. It was met with overwhelming approval and brought hundreds of new supporters to the campaign, along with potential applicants for housing on the site. A tour of the site was organised and attended by over 100 members of the local community, during which they discussed its history, its importance as a social institution within the local area and their aspirations for its future use as family-sized, affordable housing for local people. This formed the basis for the public launch of the community partnership’s intention to acquire the site.The Olympic Park Legacy Company met with the group and expressed its support for the scheme as a means to create a viable pilot scheme ahead of plans to establish a CLT on its site, post 2012.

In addition, the community partnership has also set up an Industrial and Provident Society that is actively fundraising so that it may become a viable delivery vehicle for such a project. It has raised enough money to employ one member of staff – who has since attended an international training course at the world’s largest urban CLT in Vermont – and has an active membership, board and CDS Co-Operatives co-created constitution. The body has also attracted a respectable and HCA approved investment partner and developer.

We will be putting in a bid as part of the HCA competive tender process. We work through local input and we want London wide support. Click here to see how you can get involved.