Driscoll House

Building Type and Date

Hotel, originally built in 1911-1913 as a women's hostel. Designed by Joseph and Smithem of Queen Street, London, with working drawings for the ferro-concrete construction by L.G. Mouchel & Partners. The architecture is in the Free English Baroque revival style.

Materials and Construction

The building is constructed of red brick with painted concrete dressings on the New Kent Road and west-facing elevations, and brown brick with gauged red brick dressings facing the courtyard. While the external and load-bearing walls are all brick, the interior makes extensive use of Mouchel-Hennebique ferro-concrete, a relatively new and innovative material that had been introduced into Britain at the very end of the 19th century. Windows are metal-framed casements, with a few later 20th-century timber replacements.

Plan and Layout

The building is six storeys high: a raised basement and upper ground floor, then four storeys with the upper level appearing as an attic. It is U-shaped in plan, presenting its side elevation to the road, with two wings enclosing what was originally a garden court and an open-air lounge. Below these outdoor areas are service rooms enclosing a small basement area. The main entrance is now in the long side of the building facing west and at right angles to the road, but originally residents accessed the building through a discreet garden court entrance. At the time of inspection in 2005, the original plan was still largely in use, with kitchen, dining room, and service areas in the basement; offices, staff rooms, and communal rooms on the raised ground floor; and accommodation above.

Exterior

The north, west and south elevations feature a continuous dentillated cornice, rusticated red brick quoins, tall round-arched windows under keystones at the tall raised ground level, and upper windows organised into narrow vertical bays, also with keystones.

The north elevation facing New Kent Road is a shallow block, seven window bays wide, with the pairs at each end slightly advanced. There is a canted apsidal stair tower with a semi-domed top at the east end. The raised basement and upper ground floors have larger windows, with Venetian windows in the end bays. The first to third floors and attic have rectangular windows, those in the attic above the cornice level being shorter. A plaque on the west side now reads 'Driscoll House 1913', with cherub and scroll detail. A few windows are late 20th-century timber replacements.

The long main frontage to the west is organised as a five-part façade, with advanced end and central bays. The central entrance bay has a rusticated stone base with a prominent pedimented doorcase and a three-storey Venetian window capped with an open segmental pediment. The south wing is similar but plainer, with flat gauged brick arches with keyblocks over the windows, and also has a canted apsidal stair tower to the east.

The inside courtyard elevations facing east are also plainer but feature tall ground floor windows and doors under gauged red brick arches. The doors open onto a stair with metal balustrades featuring geometric detailing, leading to a flat rooftop area that was formerly the garden court.

Interior

The interiors remain remarkably intact. The ferro-concrete is apparent in the construction of columns, beams, ceilings, floors, stairways and partitions between individual bedrooms or cubicles. The walls of the communal living areas are covered almost entirely with glazed tiles up to picture rail level throughout.

The basement dining room has brown glazed bricks, with arched openings and part-glazed doors. There are cream tiles in the kitchen and the upper public spaces. The large former common room and library have mauve glazed tiles, with matching pilasters and moulded tiles, and fireplaces with floral swags over. The former sewing room and reading rooms are similarly finished in green, and also have arched niches and integral fireplaces. The main entrance includes an office with a glazed service window under a wide arch.

The stair and balustrade are metal with geometric detailing and turned balusters, continuing the full height of the building. There is a secondary stair at the end of each wing with much simpler metal balustrades. Other surviving features in the communal areas include a fixed pantry and hatch with sash servery windows. The basement laundry retains its butler's sinks and drying cabinets, though the staff and locker areas have been altered.

The upper floors have bedrooms and bathrooms, the rooms extending down both sides of a spine corridor. Here, two tiny rooms have been combined to form one small one. These once shared a window, with a partition wall dividing the two casements: a groove in the central strut of the metal frame indicates how the partition was held. These ferro-concrete partitions have gaps at top and bottom, now blocked in. The communal bathrooms also have some later alterations.

Historical Context

Driscoll House opened in January 1913 as the Ada Lewis Women's Lodging House. Ada Lewis was the wife of Samuel Lewis, a moneylender to the rich and philanthropist who founded the Building Fund that later became known as the Samuel Lewis Trust for Dwellings for the Poor. Ada Lewis was also concerned about the lack of decent housing for single working women, and when she died in 1906, she left £50,000 to endow women's lodging houses in London. In 1910 the trustees of her will purchased land at 172 New Kent Road, and in 1911 work began to the designs of Joseph and Smithem. The building was completed in 1912 and opened in January 1913 by HRH Princess Louise, Duchess of Argyll.

When Ada Lewis House opened, it had been eagerly anticipated by those concerned for the plight of the increasing numbers of single working women in need of accommodation. Working men in need of housing had already been accommodated in London by the Rowton Houses, but despite a number of late 19th-century developments for professional women, including clubs, these were beyond the pocket of many working women. Between 1905 and 1910, at least four houses offering cheaper rooms opened in London, but some were still for women of slightly higher incomes, as was the case with the YWCA, which had been providing accommodation for women for some time. The Ada Lewis House offered modest lodgings and ordinary domestic services to about twice the number of women at about half the price. Other similar projects followed, but Ada Lewis House holds a significant place in the history of women's work and women's housing as the first of its scale, fulfilling a very serious need. In 1968 the building was sold, and it has been a hotel for travellers and foreign students since then, named Driscoll House.

Subsidiary Features

Metal boundary railings are present, those to New Kent Road set on a low brick wall with stone-capped brick piers.

Significance

The Ada Lewis Women's Lodging House, now Driscoll House, was opened in January 1913, funded by the philanthropist Ada Lewis and built to the designs of Joseph and Smithem. The building has special historic interest as the first hostel on this scale in London providing accommodation for the large numbers of working women from the growing class of those employed in clerical or similar work. Both its scale and aims are distinct from earlier examples, and the building has added significance for being the first of its kind especially for women and equivalent to the better-known Rowton hostels for men. Ada Lewis House also has special architectural interest for its well-composed and crafted Free English Baroque revival exterior that represents the philanthropy of its benefactor and the idealism of its origins. The historic interest is manifest in the integrity of the original plan form and finishes, including a number of glazed tile communal rooms, that illustrate the original arrangement of the building. These remarkably intact internal arrangements represent the changing reality of the lives of growing numbers of women at the start of the 20th century. Furthermore, there is some interest in the relatively early use of ferro-concrete in a residential institution.