Louise House

Louise House is a former girls' industrial home built in 1891 to designs by Thomas W. Aldwinckle, with William Johnson as builder. The building has undergone minor later alterations but retains its essential character.

Exterior

The building is set back from Dartmouth Road, almost abutting Forest Hill Library to the north. Designed in the Domestic Revival style, Louise House stands apart from its grander municipal neighbours through its deliberately homely appearance, achieved through tall chimneys, tile-hung gables, timber bargeboards and terracotta diapering.

The building is constructed of brick with red rubbed brick and sandstone dressings to the façade and side elevations, topped by a pitched roof with two cross gables, the larger to the south. Its original purpose is identified through Gothic lettering reading 'GIRLS INDUSTRIAL HOME' running across a band of terracotta diapering in a vine design that divides the ground from the first floor. The section reading 'INDUSTRIAL' was removed in the 1930s but the letters remain traceable.

The windows are timber mullions and transoms with four, six, or eight lights, featuring leaded panes in the upper sections. Steps lead up to the off-centre front entrance, which has a pointed arch of rubbed red brick with a terracotta hood mould. The entrance retains an iron half-grille with a design of tracery arches and sunflowers, and a recessed porch with an encaustic tiled floor. The original timber door survives, complete with coloured glass fanlight and marginal glazing.

The rear elevation is plainer, built of yellow stock brick with red rubbed brick details. Windows here are timber sashes as well as some mullions and transoms. A small single-storey extension has been added at the rear. The foundation stone records that the building was opened by Her Royal Highness Princess Louise, Marchioness of Lorne on 17 June 1890 and notes the names of the architect and builder. The former laundry block, a stock brick structure with red rubbed brick window arches, survives in the rear grounds.

Interior

The building has undergone relatively few internal alterations. The general arrangement of rooms survives, with the entrance hall leading to a skylit stairwell at the rear of the building. The original staircase remains, with its metal balustrade, though an additional metal balustrade has been added in recent years.

To the left of the entrance hall is a large room, likely the former dining room. To the right are a series of smaller rooms, presumably formerly used as services, offices and accommodation for the matron. The upper floor contains two large rooms running along the cross gables of the building which would have served as dormitories. Windows in the internal walls look into the dormitories from a smaller room, perhaps allowing the matron to monitor the girls. A number of original timber doors with tall three-light fanlights above survive throughout the building.

History

Following the Industrial Schools Act of 1857, institutions like Louise House were established to house vagrant, destitute and disorderly children. Industrial schools were principally homes for children who attended the local school each day, and developments in educational provision such as the Elementary Education Act of 1870 did not undermine the necessity of such institutions. The majority of industrial schools were privately funded and operated, although subject to official inspection and licensing.

An industrial home for boys was established in Rojack Road, Forest Hill in 1873, and one for girls in the same street in 1881. The children were fed, clothed and housed as well as taught a skill so they might earn a living upon leaving the home: boot-making and firewood chopping for the boys, or domestic service and laundering for the girls. These activities were not merely for instruction but also provided income for the homes, which thrived from the outset and expanded to take more children each year.

The charity soon attracted the patronage of the Earl of Shaftesbury, by this time a significant philanthropist and campaigner for children's rights, who became its first president in 1881. Other important patrons were the Hornimans, a local family of tea merchants who established the Horniman Museum at Forest Hill (children from the Homes visited the Museum as one of their 'treats'), Princess Louise, a daughter of Queen Victoria who noticed the children on a visit to the 'Indian and Colonial Exhibition' in 1886, and Princess Adelaide. Increasing donations enabled the construction of purpose-built premises, something quite rare in institutions for the destitute, which tended to make do with converted warehouses or houses. Shaftesbury House for boys opened in 1883, Louise House for girls in 1891, with foundation stones laid by their eponymous patrons. Shaftesbury House was demolished in 2000.

While the Forest Hill Industrial Homes did not differ from other similar institutions in purpose or activities, they were notable for their success in caring for and training destitute children. Most of the children were admitted to the Homes via Ragged Schools and mission centres in the Whitechapel area of East London, and were either orphans or their parents were unable to look after them. The suburban atmosphere of Forest Hill in the late 19th century was considered important in restoring the children to health, and annual reports of the charity record how quickly new entrants were losing 'their sickly London hue, and being transformed into rosy-cheeked children'. Others note the girls' uncertainty at 'what the green stuff [grass] was'.

The Forest Hill Homes were part of the Reformatory and Refuge Union, whose officers held them in high regard: 'if they have a specially bad case, [the Reformatory and Refuge Union] ask us to see what we can do for the child, and now that they have a good opportunity of placing a boy in exceptionally fortunate circumstances, have given the nomination thus expecting to get the best children from us though asking us to take the most destitute', observed a committee member.

The Forest Hill Homes were smaller than many comparable institutions, having only 30 boys and 30 girls at their peak (the Boys Home at Regent's Park, for example, had 140 pupils in 1904; the London County Council's Girls Industrial School at Isleworth housed 70 in 1900). They were also noted for their domestic atmosphere, which the Honorary Secretary of the Reformatory and Refuge Union described as 'homely', and where the children called the Matron 'Mother'.

This special character may have been what attracted the notable Polish paediatrician Janusz Korczak to observe the homes in Forest Hill on a visit to London in 1911. Korczak returned to Warsaw to found a children's orphanage in 1912, and later became a significant theorist of children's rights before his death in the concentration camp at Treblinka alongside nearly 200 orphanage children during the Second World War. He was a signatory on the original Declaration of the Rights of the Child in 1923, which was adopted by the League of Nations in 1923 and by the United Nations in 1946. In a Polish journal published in 1912, he described his thoughts on seeing Louise House and Shaftesbury House and located his decision to devote his life to serving 'the child and his rights' instead of having children of his own to his return journey to London from Forest Hill.

Louise House was designed by Thomas W. Aldwinckle, a local architect who served on the managing committee of the Forest Hill Industrial Homes and offered his services without charge. The builder was William Johnson. Aldwinckle also designed the public baths at Ladywell, Kentish Town and elsewhere, several of which are now listed buildings.

Setting

Louise House stands in a group of late 19th-century buildings, including the Holy Trinity Schools (1874, listed Grade II), Forest Hill Library (1901, Grade II) and Forest Hill Baths (1885, unlisted). All four are built on land granted to the Vicar of Lewisham in 1819, following the enclosure of Sydenham Common. This glebe land, popularly known as Vicar's Field, was let as allotments to those who had lost their right to graze animals on the common until the vicar made parts of the large field available for building social and charitable institutions. The vicar, the Honourable and Reverend Canon Legge, was one of the first donors to the building fund for the Louise House Girls' Home and a cousin of the Earl of Dartmouth, Viscount Lewisham MP, who was President of the Forest Hill Homes. Both men were also involved in the patronage of the Baths and other philanthropic projects in the area.