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At the Heart of Hackney since 1967 2015 THE HACKNEY SOCIETY SPACENews and views about Hackney’s builtS environment Issue 49 Summer 2015 // ISSN 2047-7465 Church Walk © Tim Crocker Annalie Riches and David Mikhail At the heart of each dwelling is a double- bronze; individually robust materials, are landlord, developer and architect height family room. It gets good natural but which together with the wildflower for this housing development at light, with windows looking north, and large roofs, seek to achieve a new delicacy 151 Church Walk in Stoke Newington. triangular rooflights. Living rooms address and lightness. The accommodation consists of the street, providing surveillance and The project was a winner of the Hackney two three-bedroom houses, a triplex security. The rear ‘concertina’ elevation acts Design Awards 2014. The judges were and a one-bedroom flat. The former both to provide oblique views that prevent ‘impressed by the clever use of the site brownfield site is in close proximity overlooking, and also to avoid a potentially and space while solving the problems of to a neighbouring residential block. overbearing and acoustically reverberant responding positively to its neighbours and The design of the scheme has evolved wall between neighbours. the street’, and added that ‘the planning to minimise overlooking and loss Materials are intentionally taken from a successfully negotiates potential overlooking of daylight to neighbours, whilst limited palette, with white oiled Siberian issues achieving abundant daylight and maximising the developable volume. larch arranged board over board giving outdoor spaces to all the units’. In addition Residents benefit from a variety of outdoor a ‘corduroy’ effect, a light buff-coloured the scheme won the London Building of spaces. In addition to courtyard gardens at brick set in a flush white lime mortar giving the Year Award in 2013 and a Housing the rear, the three terrace roofs step up in a homogenous ‘cast’ feel to the street Design Award. a ziggurat form and face south to provide facade, recalling the ubiquitous London an elevated place to enjoy the wider views stock brickwork of Georgian London, and and the light, as well as an unexpectedly a large gauge expanded aluminium mesh, contents animated and verdant streetscape. finished like the windows in anodised 01 Church Walk 02 Building Watch: Haggerston Baths Help support our work by joining the Call on Hackney Society. 03 Building Watch: Amhurst Road 020 7175 1967 or email [email protected] 04 Noticeboard or visit www.hackneysociety.org 04 Publications Building Watch Haggerston Baths Murky Waters By David Altheer* As the editor of a news website for Hackney and surrounding areas, I try to keep my personal views out of the reportage. When it came to uncovering more about what had befallen Haggerston Baths, I let a little emotion seep into my stories. The place had memories for me. On summer evenings the little weathervane ship used to gleam golden like a beacon marking a halfway point on my cycle home from work. Some nights I would turn into © Simon Mooney © Simon Mooney Whiston Road E2 in time to meet my wife and daughter there before we went on to our home a few kilometres north. They were at the Haggy because my then- little girl’s swimming teacher had switched BNP Paribas, the City property agent detailed 2005 conservation report, on BNP’s after-school lessons from Clissold Baths the council hired, was expecting baths website, describing the main hall as while a ‘leisure centre’ was being built to approaches from big money and it was not of ‘national significance’, even though the replace the Stoke Newington pool. disappointed, although one or two social pool has been altered. Some viewers say That slipped behind schedule and over enterprises also looked over the complex of they were told the pool had less significance budget, eventually costing between £35 Edwardian and 1960s buildings. in the national listing, which was awarded in 1998, than the building. They were also told million and £40 million… it is difficult to I was determined to run as many updates that a lease much shorter than 250 years be precise because in the argumentative as possible in the short time allocated for might be considered. aftermath costly lawyers were consulted. these expressions, and I did, occasionally hanging about in the street to catch the Usually it is local people who lose out after Nervousness about discussing such iron anti-squatter doors at the Laburnum such follies, and the council decided in matters, however, persists. The truth is still Road side of the building being opened for 2000 that it could no longer afford what I proving difficult to uncover. interested parties. call the ’people’s pool’. So during the last *Editor of the independent Hackney-and- 15 years of indecision neither my daughter, On 19 June 2015 the deadline to register an around news site LovingDalston.co.uk nor anyone else, has been able to slip into interest expired. The 250-year lease on the its tile-lined 25m x 10m depths. Grade 2 listed building had attracted more than 400 enquiries and about 100 people Why Haggerston Baths Matter This spring Hackney Council quietly were shown over the buildings. announced it was seeking ‘expressions of Lisa Shell, who chairs the Hackney Society interest’ from… well, anyone who could The Haggerston Pool Community Trust Planning Group, considers the importance take on a lease with a stated £25 million wants the council to prioritise any bid of Haggerston Baths maintenance bill. Flats and shops were that ’includes a swimming pool and other The striking edifice of the Edwardian mentioned as development options, but a community facilities’, and the pool hall Haggerston Baths possesses undeniable hotel was ruled out. should be left intact. This accords with a historical and architectural value. Built in the ‘Wren Revival’ style, with classical Background – Haggerston Baths pediments, Portland stone dressings and grand colonnaded balcony, in 1903 the Deadline ends for enquiries http://lovingdalston.co.uk/2015/06/deadline-ends-for- baths were squeezed between tiny terraced haggerston-baths-enquirers/ dwellings so that only the front and rear Hackney chronicler wades in to save baths http://lovingdalston.co.uk/2015/06/ elevations were originally visible. The more save-haggy-baths-says-hackneys-top-chronicler/ utilitarian laundry building, with a surviving Investors flood in for pool http://lovingdalston.co.uk/2015/06/investors-flood- chimney, water tanks and internal basement hackney boilers, sits to its west. Despite radical From baths to brewery? http://lovingdalston.co.uk/2015/06/haggerston-baths- alterations during the 1960s, the surprisingly could-become-a-brewery-pub/ modern pool hall remains relatively Hackney washes its hands of heritage http://lovingdalston.co.uk/2015/05/sell-this- unaltered, and the ladies’ second class haggerston-heritage-site-says-hackney/ bathing booths are intact. BNP Paribas Haggerston Baths http://www.haggerstonbaths.co.uk/background/ But equally as important as its architectural Haggerston Pool Community Trust https://www.facebook.com/savehaggerstonpool heritage is the Baths’ communal value for those that it served: long-standing residents 02 Building Watch who used the facilities for their weekly One more chance on Amhurst Road: laundry, who washed in the slipper baths, and taught their children to swim in the The Gibbons Department Store’s fight for survival magnificent barrel-vaulted hall. The baths were closed, as recently as 2000, since Lisa Shell, whose practice Lisa Shell Architects is involved for the second time in when the Haggerston Pool Community the reconstruction of Nos 3 and 5 Amhurst Road, reflects on the buildings’ repeated Trust has continuously campaigned for misfortune and their value to Hackney its re-opening, only to be thwarted by the Council’s lack of financial power, if not On 11 June 2003 the London Fire Brigade lack of commitment (Spaces 33). The battled against a raging fire that destroyed reinstatement of a working swimming Nos 7-17 Amhurst Road. The Earl of baths, the need for which is not contested, Amhurst at No. 19 was subsequently lost, will remain the ideal conservation unable to survive without the structural prop outcome both for the community and of the neighbour that had supported it for national heritage. over a century. Haggerston Baths was designed and built But Nos 1-5 did retain their structural by the renowned architect of public baths, integrity, saved by the one party wall which A.W.S. Cross, in response to the needs of had not been breached during the ambitious 1-19 Amhurst Road pre-2003 (source unknown) an area ‘crowded with factories and the 1898 conversion of the terrace to house the But within months of the commencement of residences of the artisan class’ (Edward magnificent Gibbons Department Store. the excavation work in 2013, the basement Walford, 1865, social commentator, taken fridges of Raw Duck, the new restaurant in Prior to its demise the year before the fire, from The Architectural History Practice’s No. 5, began to topple and window-glass to the store had been run by one of Hackney’s Conservation Report of September crack. The remaining stump of the Victorian longest standing businesses, founded 2005). The early 19th century had seen terrace on Amhurst Road was yet again in 1831 by Thomas Gibbons. It is pure a gas works and chemical factory built evacuated and a controlled demolition, with coincidence that Thomas Gibbon is today in Haggerston, alongside the traditional the entire loss of No. 5, followed, since it managing director of the family-run property industries of furniture and shoe-making, was found that the foundations could not company, GMS Estates, who are the long- weaving, and brick and tile manufacture, be stabilised.