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 © Tim

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. standing and, it transpires, committed, all served by the Regent’s Canal, a block owners of the surviving three buildings. Such repeated misfortune is surprising north of the Baths. Overcrowding and Despite significant fire damage they invested enough, but it is not the whole story. The poverty were the inevitable outcome of the in a high-quality part-reconstruction and terrace was built on land reclaimed from exploitation that came with industrialisation, refurbishment of the surviving buildings, the 1861 culverting of the Hackney Brook. which led Charles Booth to describe completed only in 2012. The decade-long The brook, whose course followed the line neighbouring Hoxton as ‘the leading blight on Amhurst Road was then to be fully of Amhurst Road, features in paintings, criminal quarter of London and indeed all eradicated by the construction of a new engravings and old maps and played an England’ (quoted by David Mander, 1996, hotel and student accommodation on the important role in the life of Hackney, often More Light, More Power: An Illustrated adjacent site, designed by Stephen Davy flooding the medieval settlement. Once History of Shoreditch. Stroud: Sutton Peter Smith Architects. subdued, the immediate area flourished, Publishing, p. 73). Continued on back page By the time the baths were built, under the long-established Public Baths and Wash Houses Act of 1846, there was a pressing need for facilities in a borough where private bathrooms were scarce and disease rife. The huge complex served to ‘promote the health and cleanliness of the working classes, and as a necessary consequence, improve their social condition and raise their moral tone’ (quote from the ‘Committee appointed to promote the establishment of Baths and Washhouses for the Labouring Classes’, 1852), but it also offered entertainment through the winter, when the pool was covered to create a boxing arena.

The powerful presence of the now dilapidated building reinforces Haggerston’s identity, and informs newcomers of the social and cultural history of the area. Haggerston Baths is vital to the character of a part of London at great risk of losing any connection with its past, and facilities for its residents. 1-19 Amhurst Road artist’s impression (Hackney planning explorer)

03 Continued from page 03 Noticeboard new models to sustain and enhance public spaces. Money from renting the office to WWI plaque business or community groups will be put Cllr Guy Nicholson, Cabinet Member for back into maintaining local parks. The tree Regeneration, unveiled a plaque at 16 office will be in place until December. Alkham Road, N16 to commemorate the first bombing raid on London during WWI. A bomb was dropped from a German Publications Hackney Station postcard from the collection of Zeppelin on 31 May 1915. Hackney writer Iain Sinclair Melvyn H. Brooks The Prince Edward has two new books out. Hackney Council has granted The Prince Black Apples of Gower Edward planning protection as an Asset of rediscovers the paths of Community Value. The pub in Wick Road Sinclair’s childhood in South was built in 1886. Wales. Little Toller Books, £15. London Overground. A Day’s Geffrye Museum Walk Around the Ginger Line The Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) has provides an account of a walk awarded the Geffrye Museum £11m to along London’s Overground support its plans to develop the museum for network. Hamish Hamilton, £16.99. the future. New features will include gallery Illustrated London News 1862 clipping from the The Outside Edge: How Outsiders collection of Melvyn H. Brooks and library spaces to display more items from the collections and archives, inspiring Can Succeed in a World Made by with smaller scale speculative development new facilities for the learning and events Insiders by Hackney-based adding to the distinguished residential villas programme, enhanced visitor services Robert Kelsey distinguishes that had been constructed earlier. and an additional entrance opposite between advantaged and disadvantaged outsiders. In But not before a first tragedy had struck: Hoxton station. contrast to Malcolm Gladwell, before completion of the construction of The Chesham Arms Kelsey believes that most the original terrace on Amhurst Road, The The Chesham Arms reopened on 1 July outsiders are disadvantaged. Illustrated London News of 22 February following a campaign by the Save The He sets out to establish how such people 1862 reports that ‘three of the houses fell in Chesham group who objected to the can develop the edge required to succeed. . . . Three [of the workmen] were found to owner’s unauthorised plan to turn the pub Capstone, £9.99. be dead and the survivors . . . conveyed to into a residential property. The pub was the the German Hospital’. Those three houses first building in Hackney to be listed as an were Nos 1-5 Amhurst Road. Asset of Community Value. Thanks to Kopykat for sponsoring this issue This false start explains why the 1870 OS Cremer Street Studios Kopykat Printing Limited map shows a completed terrace, but other Artists at Cremer Street Studios have been 76 Rivington Street, London EC2A 3AY sources claim that it was constructed told to support demolition of their building Tel: 020 7739 2451 Fax: 020 7729 5925 during the 1870s. The terrace subsequently or leave the premises within two months. www.kopykat.co.uk provided shops and entertainments to If they agree to sign a letter supporting Kopykat based in Shoreditch specialises in Hackney’s prosperous residents, and development plans, they will be allowed to company stationery and high quality marketing facilities for railway commuters for about stay until November. material, we cover onsite litho printing, digital printing, copying and direct mail, environmentally 130 years. This area of Hackney prospered Hoxton Hall we have recently been awarded Green Mark well into the 20th century, only to suffer Hoxton Hall has been restored by Foster accreditation and we print using vegetable decline with the rest of the borough after the Wilson Architects. The five-year project has based inks, without the use of alcohol Second World War. and deliver in an LPG vehicle. doubled the Grade II* listed hall’s audience We understand from the developer of 7-19 capacity by opening up its upper and lower Amhurst Road, that the ground beneath side balconies for public use. Improvements kopykat Nos 1-5 is now firm and the terrace will have also been made to the building’s foyer rise again for the fourth time, to recover the and youth arts centre facilities. Design and Print quality and character of that which once TREExOFFICE housed the Gibbons Department Store, and Spaces is published by the Hackney Society. TREExOFFICE is a pop-up office built to restore a fine architectural and aesthetic Views expressed in the articles are not around a tree in Hoxton Square. It was necessarily those of the Society. backdrop to the street. designed by Natalie Jeremijenko with artists Edited by: Monica Blake But even if the power of the Hackney Brook Shuster + Moseley, architects Tate Harmer Layout by: [email protected] is finally defeated, this may not be the final and briefing architects Gensler. The initiative Contributors: David Altheer, Monica Blake chapter for the Amhurst Road terrace: in 20 is part of the Park and Lisa Shell Photos: Monica Blake, Tim Crocker and years Crossrail 2 may still sweep through Hack project, led Simon Mooney Hackney Central taking the ‘safeguarded’ by Groundwork The Hackney Society Travelodge and TK Max development with London and The Round Chapel, it, again testing the resilience of the fabric of Hackney Council, 1d Glenarm Road, London E5 0LY Nos 1-5 Amhurst Road. and set up to test T: 020 7175 1967 E: [email protected] W: www.hackneysociety.org Help support our work by joining the Hackney Society. Call on The Hackney Society is a registered Charity 020 7175 1967 or email [email protected] or (No 107459) and Company limited by visit www.hackneysociety.org guarantee (No 04574188)