20-24 Old Street London EC1 Heritage Statement June 2016 Built Heritage Consultancy Outline statement 20-24 Old Street London EC1 Heritage Statement June 2016 Contents 1.0 Introduction 1 2.0 Understanding 2 3.0 Significance 16 4.0 Policy Context 22 5.0 Assessment of the scheme 30 6.0 Conclusions 39 7.0 Sources 40 © Built Heritage Consultancy 2016 This report is for the sole use of the person/organisation to whom it is addressed. It may not be used or referred to in whole or in part by anyone else without the express agreement of the Built Heritage Consultancy. The Built Heritage Consultancy does not accept liability for any loss or damage arising from any unauthorised use of this report. The Built Heritage Consultancy Limited is registered in England, number 7314300. Registered office: 5 The Chambers, Vineyard, Abingdon, OX14 3PX. 1.0 Introduction 1.1 The site and the proposals Nos. 20 -24 Old Street, London EC1 is a grade II listed former showrooms and workshop building now used for office suites. It is listed primarily for its unusual late 19th century front elevation of cast iron arcades with decorated spandrels. It is situated in the Hat & Feathers Conservation Area and is adjacent to the St Luke’s Conservation Area on the north-east fringes of Clerkenwell. This was an area of manufacturing and engineering in the 19th century, and since the 1980s it has undergone a regeneration with many 19th century buildings being converted to office and studio uses for creative industries, bringing back some of the vibrancy the area had in the nineteenth century. The present proposals are for an overhaul of the building including checking on the condition of the cast iron front elevation before considering its redecoration, and to add a lightweight structure on the roof to provide another floor of office/studio space. This is proposed to be set back from the front elevation and hidden by the parapet, sitting on the existing roof structure and incorporating the present lift and watertank housing. 1.2 The report The Built Heritage Consultancy has been asked to provide a historical assessment of this listed building and its surroundings, to inform development of a suitable scheme, and to assess the proposals to add a rooftop storey in terms of the applicable heritage planning policies. This report was prepared by Charles Wagner and Edmund Harris and reviewed by James Weeks. The site was visited in August and September 2015 and again in May 2016, and researched was carried out in the Islington Local History Centre, Historic England London Records and the London Metropolitan Archives. Built Heritage 20-24 Old Street - Heritage Statement Consultancy 1 2.0 Understanding 2.1 Early history of the area Clerkenwell was outside the walls of the City of London in the medieval period and several religious houses were founded in the area: St Mary’s Nunnery and the Priory of St John established in the 12th century and The Charterhouse in the 14th. In the 17th century it became a fashionable place to live with mansions replacing the monastic sites. It also became a place to visit for entertainment, with the Fortune Theatre on Whitecross St and several springs and wells which, as well as supplying water to the City of London, became spas and places of entertainment, such as Sadler’s Wells. Old Street was recorded as Ealdestrate c.1200 and le Oldestrete in 1373. According to John Stow’s A Survey of London 1603, Old Street is named because it was the old route from Aldersgate, a main northern exit from the City of London, to the North and East, until Bishopsgate became more prominent. As such the area outside the City at the top of Aldersgate Street, from the start of Goswell Street to where Old Street commences, was an important place for traders to set up outside the City and its tax regime. Indeed, Whitecross Street, three streets to the east running north from the Barbican, was a street market from the Reformation for the same reasons. By the late 17th century, Morgan’s map shows the built up area of London had reached to Old Street. On this map the modern layout of Old Street is recognisable with its east end is marked as Rotten Row with Middle Passage. Left Clerkenwell from Morgan’s Map of the Whole of London 1682, Old Street and Crescent Row already built up and the island block titled Rotten Row: Right Rocque’s Map of London 1746 shows the development North of Old Street Built Heritage 20-24 Old Street - Heritage Statement Consultancy 2 2.2 Eighteenth Century transition In the later seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the area became a hotbed of non-conformity, with the purchase of Bunhill Fields as a non-conformist burial ground and the establishment of the Wesleys’ chapel on City Road. Also during this period industries such as brewing and distilling, and foundries, were found in the area. Clerkenwell was divided into the parishes of St John and St James, while to the east the parish of St Luke was taken from the north of St Giles Cripplegate. By the mid-18th century the built up area of the City extended only a block north of Old Street. Rocque’s Map of London 1746 shows the west end of Old Street looking much the same though, with Sycamore Street and Crescent Passage much as they are now. 2.3 Nineteenth Century By 1800 much of Clerkenwell was built up. A later Horwood map of 1795 shows a brewery occupying all of the east side of Domingo Street, on the west side of which was another large block running down to Baltic Street. Early in the nineteenth century other heavy industries were built on or near Old Street, such as a gasworks to the north of Old Street off Goswell Road. Horwood 1795 showing the Brewery south of Old Street and the island block on Old Street cut back as a result Built Heritage 20-24 Old Street - Heritage Statement Consultancy 3 The large scale Ordnance Survey of 1875, surveyed in 1871, shows less heavy industry and more engineering works, warehouses and stables, indicating an evolution to more skilled industry, such as revolving shutters and carriage manufactories. The map captures the neighbourhood shortly before Clerkenwell Road was driven through the east of the area, taking land from the grounds of The Charterhouse, to provide a continuous route from the end of Oxford Street to Shoreditch. Clerkenwell Road and Theobalds Road were constructed by the Metropolitan Board of Works in 1874–8 as the central portion of an intended cross-capital arterial road, linking West End and East End. This new route made Old Street much more of a through road, and would have perhaps encouraged the tenants along the street to make their warehouses more like showrooms, with eye-catching elevations. The brewery had gone by this time, and as a result the island block on the south side of Old Street had lengthened to its present extent. Trade directories show a mixture of manufactories and warehouses in the area. Ordnance Survey 1875 showing the street layout much as today except for Baltic Street’s extension westwards Built Heritage 20-24 Old Street - Heritage Statement Consultancy 4 No early photographic record of this stretch of buildings in Old Street in the nineteenth century has been found and there is no John Tallis Street View from the 1840s. The buildings would have been general purpose warehouses and manufactories, often leased by the floor, and tenants might move in, expand to other floors and then invest in improving the buildings, often incorporating existing building in the new, by adding a new frontage. Such a business was Samuel Haskins and Brothers. 2.4 Samuel Haskins and Brothers Samuel Haskins and Brothers are recorded as one of the longest established businesses that operated in the Old Street area, having been founded in 1784. They are variously described as blind and shutter manufacturers and shopfitters, but their letterhead is recorded as also saying ‘constructors of ornamental iron buildings’. They exported their goods far and wide throughout the Empire, for instance Haskins Roller Shutters are recorded on 19th century buildings in Australia. They were based in the buildings on Old Street from around 1860 until the 1920s. By the 1920s their office and factory had moved to Walthamstow, but they continued to have a presence in Old Street until 1930 when they merged with Pollards Shopfitters of St John Street. 2.5 Nos 20-24 Old Street The first recorded lease Haskins signed was for No 24 in 1859, and in 1865 a 30yr lease was signed for £50pa. In 1880 a letter from agents Cluttons states that Haskins wanted to make substantial improvements and they recommended approval for Haskins to spend £1,700. In August 1881 a new lease was signed for 47yrs at £70pa, indicating substantial improvements. The Minutes of the Metropolitan Board of Works for 1872 show approval of Samuel Haskins’ cast iron bridge over Middle Row (now Crescent Passage) to link his Old Street works with his Memel Street properties. In 1880 an application was made by Messrs Ford & Hesketh architects for extending the window blind and revolving shutter works and creating a new warehouse front on Old Street (covered in The Builder 26 June 1880). The first designs were rejected as having openings ‘in excess of the proscribed size’. In November 1880 the design was approved for a front 53 feet high ‘of iron filled with wooden sashes glazed with horizontal divisions and a parapet of brick’.