Former London Diocesan Girls' Friendly Society Hostel (St Mungos)

FORMER LONDON DIOCESAN GIRLS' FRIENDLY SOCIETY HOSTEL (ST MUNGO'S), 29 FRANCIS STREET

This impressive neo-Wren style hostel for women was designed by R Stephen Ayling and built between 1912 and 1914 for the London Diocesan Girls Friendly Society. It occupies a prominent corner site to the rear of Westminster Cathedral.

The building is constructed of stock brick with red brick and stone dressings, and a slate roof. It comprises eight bays to Francis Street, three bays on the splayed corner, and five bays to Stillington Street. The structure has three storeys plus basement and attic, rising to four storeys in the corner section.

The main architectural feature is the grand corner section, distinguished by alternating red brick and Portland stone quoins and a French-style mansard roof with prominent chimneys. Curved stone steps ascend to the advancing central entrance bay, which has an open triangular stone pediment and a stone door case with segmental pediment. These entrance features are decorated with carvings of garlands, swags and a cartouche dated 1913, carved by H C Fehr. The side ranges are more modest in character, their architecture derived from terraced houses of late 17th-century London. They feature rubbed brick surrounds to timber sash windows, projecting string courses painted white, prominent stone dentil cornices and dormer windows in the attic mansards. The building's materials are of high quality throughout, including finely gauged brick to the flat arches with keyblocks and decorative cast iron railings. A second entrance with stone door case is located on Francis Street. Characterful signs are painted directly onto the brickwork: one within an arrow announces 'ENTRANCE TO No 29', and another indicates the building number. The foundation stone, to the left of the entrance, records that Mrs Chaloner Chute, Central President of the Girls Friendly Society, initiated construction on 26 February 1913. The rear of the building projects in a T-shaped plan with much plainer elevations, though these are distinguished by the superior quality brickwork in gauged flat arches and segmental curved parapets to the staircase bays.

The interior, undergoing refurbishment at the time of listing inspection, retains a number of historic features. These include two sets of entrance doors and a part-glazed stained glass vestibule screen in the hallway. Two staircases are located at the end of each side wing, with basement-ground floor staircases in the central section. All staircases feature green dado tiling, cast iron balustrades and moulded timber handrails. At least two simple Arts and Crafts style fireplaces survive, with timber overmantles and green tiled surrounds and hearths. A large number of tiled hearths remain, though some without their fireplace surrounds. A stained glass window in one of the second floor communal rooms bears the inscription 'KEEP INNOCENCY' in a scroll below a dove. Fragmentary dado tiling is visible in the basement. The original plan form survives largely intact, with spinal corridors in the three wings accessing small bedrooms and larger communal spaces at their apex, though the communal rooms in the basement and ground floor have been subdivided with partitions.

The hostel was built to provide accommodation for the increasing numbers of lower middle-class women arriving in London to work as clerks, secretaries and shop-assistants in the late Victorian and Edwardian periods. The Girls Friendly Society was founded in 1875 by Mary Townsend as an Anglican organisation offering care and support to such women through seven lodges across west London in areas including Ealing, Kensington and at 5 Bourdon Street, Berkeley Square. Young women working in local shops could lodge in separate cubicles. By 1912, accommodation proved inadequate to meet demand, prompted by 'the remarkable development and rapid increase in the number of professions and occupations open to women, and the consequent necessity of their leaving their homes and living away from their relatives and friends'.

This hostel opened in February 1914 on a site close to Victoria Station. It provided accommodation for eighty women in bedrooms rather than cubicles. The building also featured a waiting room where women arriving on early morning workmen's trains could wait safely and comfortably before their working day began. A large dining room with a separate exterior door allowed outside members to use it as a restaurant, and a ground floor sitting room was available. The presence of bedrooms rather than cubicles, combined with the building's quality and the requirement of membership in the Girls Friendly Society, indicates the hostel was intended for lower middle-class 'respectable working women and girls' on modest budgets rather than working class young women. The offices of the London Diocesan Girls Friendly Society were also located in the building.

The hostel was not a charitable foundation. The Society hoped for dividends comparable to those from Hopkinson House, a philanthropic lodging house that returned 4% annually from 1908–1911, which may have prompted the Society to establish itself as a share-holding limited company in 1912. However, a strong moral dimension characterised the enterprise. When the Bishop of London opened the building in February 1914, he commented that young women coming to London to earn their living faced 'loneliness and moral dangers' and asked 'Where was she to find friends and that quiet religious influence which would be her mainstay in time of temptation? That hostel would answer the need.'

R Stephen Ayling designed five significant commissions for women's lodging houses between 1902 and 1914. As a member of the Southern Committee of the National Association for Women's Lodging-homes, he was ideally positioned to design this hostel.