Carrington House

 In June I went to a meeting held by the Brookmill Road Conservation Area Society where to hear Martin Stilwell talking about ‘social housing in South East London with a focus on Carrington House and Sylvia Cottages’ – the buildings opposite the Brookmill Park are the New Cross end of Brookmill Road.    He was good and very interesting but obviously putting Carrington House into the context of housing built by the early London County Council. Carrington House was built by the LCC as a hostel for single men and I was very aware that it was coming up on my list of sites listed in the Industrial Archaeology of South East London. 

I was very concerned that when I wrote up Carrington House that I must not just parrot out what Martin Stilwell said - but at the same time it was a site I didn’t know at all well.  I wrote up sites on Deptford Creek for Weekender and then my book ‘The Industries of Deptford Creek’ – but found this a very difficult area to do and I left a lot out.  I know I shouldn’t have avoided writing about it and I hope this article will make for up the gap in the book. And also that I manage to say something original about it here.2

There is another complication.  I am supposed to be writing about Greenwich and Brookmill Roads is now in the Borough of Lewisham.   SELIA list Carrington House under ‘Deptford’ because in the 1890s Brookmill Road was in the area of The Greenwich District Board of Works.  That body was abolished in 1900 and Brookmill Road became part of Lewisham.  Carrington House was actually built by the newly set up London County Council, planned in the 1890s and finished in the 1900s – right at the point everything changed.   

So, perhaps, I had better start and talk about the building rather than the background and the area it is in.   What does SELIA have to say about it?  “This lodging house built, in 1902, Carrington House is a monumental redbrick lodging house intended to accommodate 803 men”.  

The building was designed by WE Riley ‘Superintendent Architect’ at the London County Council. He headed a team of young and often left wing architects, many associated with the Art Workers Guild, who have left a legacy of exciting original and interesting buildings.  By the 1950s it was the largest and arguably the most prestigious architects' practice in the world.  Riley lived locally at 63 Lewisham Hill and I am trying to persuade myself that he could easily have seen Carrington House from hi upstairs back windows – although it must have been a very minor part of the department’s overall output. In Greenwich at around the same time he was responsible for Hardy Cottages in Eastney Street, Hughes Fields in Deptford and also Greenwich Power Station. 

It was named ‘Carrington’ apparently after Lord Carrington and most of the accounts of the building say he was at that time Chair of the London County Council. This is not so.   Carrington was never Chair although he was a member for a while as a Liberal. Most of his obituaries and biographical articles concentrate on his service record and his career in government and his role in the LCC is never mentioned.  He Chaired a subcommittee -the Housing for the Working Classes Committee – 1903/4.  It was opened by his wife Countess Cecilia Margaret Carrington on 21st November 1903

The London County Council, newly set up in 1889, tried to tackle problems around housing for single working men. In London, as elsewhere there was a network of private lodging houses which often had very low standards and were barely decent. Some local authorities in other areas had set up public lodging houses aimed at single men in low-paid work.  In London a number of such hostels were built by Rowton House, a charitable institution, and they were seen as a model for such accommodation. The LCC thus planned three hostels, the first in Drury Lane, opened in 1893.

In the 1890s Brookmill Road, then called Mill Lane, was a slum with old properties many of which operated as common lodging houses. Maps also so show industrial sites.  It was decided that they must go and the County Council decided to build a very large lodging house here for the many single homeless men in the area, Greenwich Board of Works however had other ideas and thought that the demolished area of cottages should be replaced by working-class housing. The resulting compromise led to the building of the terrace of houses now called Sylvia Cottages and also, later, Carrington House as the lodging house.

The snag with this these big lodging houses is that they cannot differentiate between the many sober and industrious working men who would appreciate a decent standard of housing and the petty criminals, drunks and unstable for which such lodging houses were to become notorious. Staffing of the building was about management not about social support - .

Today when the building is no longer operative as a lodging house the emphasis by historians and salesmen has been on its architecture. When it was built I suspect that people were more interested in the way that it was managed for the use of working men. I have a seen contemporary press reports in which described it as a ‘palatial’ in a very unfriendly way. There was always criticism of the London County Council and accusations of overspending in social provision.

So, Carrington House was designed by, William Riley’s young team under the sub-committee chaired briefly by Carrington.  There are many descriptions and assessments of it.   One, for instance, is by Historic England to support its Grade II listing which has much detail about the eaves soffits and stone-faced parapets and so on. Another is a quotation from a specified work which may or may not be by the late Elain Harwood describing it as a ‘colossal proto-modernist doss house’. 

Inside Carrington House is descried by several writers as ‘similar to a prison’.  Men had to enter via a turnstile and pay a 6d (3p.?) for which they were allocated a cubicle with a bed, with three blankets, two sheets, and quilt.  These were separated by partitions and one inmate has described how some men would climb over partitioned walls to steal from a sleeping neighbour. Men were admitted and could use their cubicles from 7 pm and could stay until 8.30 am.  Carrington House also had a floor for night workers where the hours were 7 am to 5 pm.  Food was supplied at a small charge – and apparently prepared by the Warden's wife - a chop, two vegetables, and a mug of tea, coffee, or cocoa for sixpence.  There was also a large stove, with boiling water, pots, pans, crockery, and kettles for free for those wanted to provide their own dinner.  There were bathrooms with hot water.  Three was one switch which turned all the lights off at night. There were common rooms –a dining room, a reading room and a smoking room as well as a barber, a tailor and a boot mender.   In 1903 it provided accommodation for 803 men, but in the first months only 240 were recorded.  Carrington House was never a financial success.

In the Great War the building was taken over as a home for refugees and nursing staff were appointed.   800 Belgian refugees were housed here having been brought from the front and this seems to have triggered anti-German riots in the area.   It returned to its prewar use as a lodging house and was apparently the scene of race riots in 1949 when a group of 50 West Africans were housed there by the Colonial Office –  who were thus ignoring its stated use as a home for working men who chose to go there and instead using it to dump people they found inconvenient. 

By the time Carrington House closed in the early 1990s it was very run down. It has been for many years a place of dread and many locals were frightened to walk past it in the street.  This was the fate of several of these huge lodging houses – the high ideals of their foundation were very hard to maintain.   I am sure that most of the men who lived there were those who for a variety of reasons were homeless but who had jobs –usually very low paid – and who wanted somewhere quiet and clean to go back to at night .  Many such men did in effect live there for years.  But, with no social service support it also housed the problem drinkers, men on the edge of society, and those barely coping.  I note in the comments to some of the blogs which describe Carrington House that some men who said they lived there had spent their childhood in care and had been sent out to face the world alone.  Many young men like them would not make it into steady employment and a ‘regular ‘ life.  

Today Carrington House has been – like everywhere else – converted to flats.  The street is quiet and respectable. The name has been changed to 'Mereton Mansions' and its fine architecture is no doubt appreciated.  Around its boundary to the street is fencing made of stretchers from the Great War and the problem drinkers are elsewhere.

Thanks, Neil Rhind – and of the many blogs, most helpful Caroline’s Miscellany.