Administrative Block To Former Lambeth Workhouse

This is the former administrative block and chapel of Lambeth Workhouse, later part of Lambeth Hospital. It was built between 1871 and 1873 by the Parish of St Mary, Lambeth, to designs by architects R Parris and TW Aldwinckle. The foundation stone, dated 3 April 1871, was laid by John Doulton, the pottery manufacturer who was then Chairman of the Board of Guardians. The building was extended in 1880.

Construction and Materials

The building is constructed of yellow stock brick with red brick and stone dressings, including some blue brick detailing and terracotta decoration. The roofs are slate with hipped profiles.

Original Layout

The workhouse was originally aligned northwest to southeast and laid out symmetrically following the 'pavilion plan' principle. This comprised a central administrative block with dining halls and service buildings to the rear, flanked on either side by two long two-storey pavilion ward blocks. The whole complex was linked by long lateral corridors on each floor and a two-storey covered way between blocks. The pavilion blocks and rear buildings have since been demolished.

Current Plan

The surviving building has a central corridor with rooms on either side, including the former committee room to the left, and a cross corridor at the rear with stairs at either end. The upper floor contains a large open-plan chapel. The main block is flanked by lower, set-back two-storey wings: originally the master's office to the north and living quarters to the south. These wings have further set-back extensions added in 1880 when the workhouse was expanded. A flat-roofed structure at the rear of the administrative block is of no special interest.

Exterior

The building presents a unified, symmetrical composition in an ornate Venetian Gothic style with polychrome brickwork, contrasting stone, and narrow horizontal terracotta panels in dog-tooth pattern above the ground-floor openings and as window aprons on the upper floor.

The west-facing front elevation has three bays divided by pilasters, with angle pilasters to the returns. The central bay features a triple-arched recessed porch with carved stone capitals—those to the piers are zig-zagged and crocketed, while the central arch is carried on doubled cast-iron columns. The arches are round-headed with pointed extrados accentuated by a band of blue brick, finely gauged red-brick heads, and flush keystones. These details are repeated in the arches of the upper-floor chapel windows. Behind the porch is the main entrance flanked by round-headed windows with gauged brick arches. The outer bays of the front have narrow paired windows.

The upper-floor central bay has triple windows with detailing that complements the porch below, but with stone engaged columns to the central arch. Tall windows to either side, and those on the first-floor side elevations, have stone upper sections with inset roundels and moulded brackets beneath forming a Caernarvon arch above tall sash windows. The cills have dog-tooth moulding to their lower edges. A moulded brick and stone dentilled cornice runs between storeys and at eaves level.

The side elevations, up to where they meet the lower wings, have bays separated by pilasters. These pilasters disguise ventilation flues serving the chapel and each terminates in a low square stack. Ground-floor windows to the main block and side wings have segmental gauged-brick arches with dentilled intrados and slightly pointed extrados, plus stone shoulders.

The side wings are identical in design, each with two inner bays, a full-height canted bay, a single stepped-back bay, and a pavilion behind. The façades follow some of the decorative treatment of the main block with red brick and terracotta detail and a dentilled cornice. There are single windows on the ground floor and paired narrower windows on the upper floor; the two inner first-floor bays have an arrow loop between the windows. All elevations have timber sash windows.

A section of the covered way to the northwest survives as a two-storey structure. The upper level is open to the sides with a double-pitched roof carried on cast-iron columns. The upper walkway has decorative wrought-iron balustrades.

Interior

The essential plan survives. The ground floor has been modernised with suspended ceilings and lacks visible features of interest. The stairs have simple iron balustrades.

The first-floor chapel occupies five bays; the two easternmost bays, where the chapel abuts the side wings, are blind, and the lower sections of the five rear windows are blocked. The decorative treatment reflects that of the façade with polychrome brickwork, terracotta ornament, and gauged-brick window arches. The chapel has an unusual partly-ceiled hammerbeam roof with pierced metal discs to the spandrels of the arch braces. Three perforated zinc panels in the timber-boarded ceiling provided ventilation through vertical flues in the walls—a gas burner was placed in each panel to create an upward current of vitiated air. The interiors of the side wings were not inspected.

The lodges and former receiving wards on either side of the site entrance are of no special interest.

Historical Context

The first parish workhouse of St Mary, Lambeth was built in 1726 near Lambeth Butts, now the west end of Black Prince Road. A workhouse appears on Horwood's map of 1799 on Workhouse Lane (later Princes Road, then Black Prince Road) near Lambeth Butts, probably the same building. The Lambeth Poor Law Parish, formed in 1835 following the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834, retained and expanded this building.

Lambeth gained notoriety in 1866 when journalist James Greenwood published 'A Night in a Workhouse' in the Pall Mall Gazette. Greenwood had spent a night disguised as a vagrant in the casual ward at Lambeth Workhouse and witnessed its filthy and overcrowded conditions.

Lambeth was one of several workhouses rebuilt following the Metropolitan Poor Act of 1867, which established separate infirmaries for workhouses. The new building in Renfrew Road was designed by R Parris and TW Aldwinckle following a limited architectural competition and housed 820 inmates. The plan followed the 'pavilion' principle based on contemporary hospital design. Lambeth Workhouse was the first to adopt the pavilion plan in London and was one of the earliest nationally to do so.

The workhouse's most famous inmate was seven-year-old Charlie Chaplin, who stayed there briefly in 1896 with his mother when his father fell into debt.

An infirmary was built on the adjacent site to the northwest of the workhouse to designs by Fowler and Hill, completed in 1877. In 1922, the workhouse and infirmary were amalgamated and renamed Lambeth Hospital. Of the infirmary, only the water tower survives; this structure also served the workhouse.

Thomas William Aldwinckle (1843/4-1920) designed other workhouses, including Wandsworth and Clapham Union Workhouse of 1886 (now demolished), as well as hospitals, asylums, and public baths.

The building is of special interest for the architectural quality of its exterior, whose principal elevations are virtually intact and highly ornate for a workhouse building of the period, especially for London. The chapel has special interest for its internal decorative treatment, which echoes that of the façade, and its unusual and elaborate roof. It has rarity value as the principal building of a Victorian metropolitan workhouse, of which few examples survive in London. It has historic interest as one of the earliest metropolitan workhouses to be rebuilt following the Metropolitan Poor Act of 1867, and for its associations with Charlie Chaplin and John Doulton. It has group value with the former workhouse/infirmary water tower and the courthouse and fire station in Renfrew Road, together forming a good ensemble of Victorian public and institutional buildings.