Louise House Open Day - a Journey into Forest Hill’s Victorian Past

What was life like for destitute girls in the late nineteenth century? How did Louise House inspire a visiting paediatrician from Poland? Could the building find a new community use in the 21st century?

On Saturday, 18th September, the Forest Hill Society and Sydenham Society will be organising tours of Louise House (between the library and the pools) where you can find some answers to these questions and look round a historic building which is normally closed to the public. This is part of Open House – London’s hugely popular architectural showcase. The doors will be open from 10am until 5pm.

Places are limited (for safety reasons) so you will need to BOOK a tour online at www.openhouselondon.org.uk. Tours will be for ten people every half an hour with some time at the end to look at the exhibition.

Louise House used to be a Girls’ Industrial Home providing care for destitute girls whilst they learnt skills (there is a laundry block to the rear of the building.) The foundation stone was laid by Princess Louise, Queen Victoria’s daughter, in 1890. Built in the domestic revival style, it is highly decorated externally but it has a utilitarian interior retaining the original floor plan.

It also has links with Janusz Korczak, the Polish/German/Jewish paediatrician, children's author and martyr whose visit to Louise House in 1911 inspired him to devote his life to the enlightened care of children.

He founded an orphanage in Warsaw, implementing many of the ideas he’d seen in practice at Louise House. On the morning of 6 August 1942, German soldiers herded the orphanage staff and 192 children towards the railway station with Korczak at their head. The group was forced onto a train bound for Treblinka extermination camp. That is the last that was heard of them.

View PDF of display boards from Louise House Open Day

Louise House – The Way Forward?

Louise House was listed at Grade II by English Heritage in August 2008. The building consists of a structure like a house with three large rooms on the ground floor, an unusual central staircase and three large rooms on the first floor. There are a number of smaller rooms towards the rear on both floors. There is a front garden, currently used for parking, and a rear garden which has mainly been surfaced as a play area. The rear garden has a long, single storey building which once housed the Laundry facilities, which has south facing windows.


Lewisham Council owns the building and has said that it may make it available either by transfer or on a long lease at a negligible rent to a community organisation which has a viable plan that benefits the local community. “Expressions of interest” where sought from the community between November 2009 and March 2010.

The Council is currently working with the Crystal Palace Community Development Trust (CPCDT) on its proposal. The CPCDT was set up in 2004 to help with regeneration projects in the wards surrounding Crystal Palace Park. The Trust has submitted a proposal to Lewisham Council for a refurbished Louise House to provide workspace particularly for start-up businesses. The main “house” would thus become a serviced office development. It is also interested in exploring ideas for refurbishing the Laundry as a community nursery with affordable places.

Since March 2010, Lewisham Council has funded a full condition survey of the buildings. Meanwhile, the Forest Hill Ward's Locality Fund has given CPCDT £4,000 which has been used to complete a Feasibility Study. This study indicated that the proposal for a serviced office and community nursery was viable both financially and in terms of the suitability of the building.

This has been taking place against the backdrop of the Forest Hill Pools development next door, which recently gained planning permission. The architects of the pools, Roberts Limbrick, have visited Louise House. In their plans for the pools, they have made provision for a common treatment of the “front garden” areas of the pools, Louise House and the Library which would seek to unify the Victorian frontages behind a common green treatment with disabled access to all three buildings. This is in the future, but the plans for the pools do not create obstacles to the eventual realisation of this part of the scheme.

In July 2010, Louise House, the old pools frontage and the Library all became part of the extended Forest Hill Conservation Area.

CPCDT is working with Lewisham Council to seek funding which will enable the project to move forward. In the current economic climate and against a background of public sector cuts this will be challenging. But there are hopes that the Autumn round of Lottery funding will provide some support.

For more information on Louise House, visit www.louisehouse.notlong.com
For more photos of the interior, visit www.flickr.com/photos/tim_walder

Forest Hill Pools - The Way Ahead

We now know that the architects who will design our new Forest Hill Pools development are Roberts Limbrick Ltd. They seem to be fans of Thomas Aldwinkle’s legacy of Victorian civic buildings (he designed Forest Hill pools, Louise House and the library.) Roberts Limbrick are currently working on the refurbishment of another of his pools, Kentish Town Baths.

They have also designed and built a number of other modern swimming pools for Local Authorities in and around London including the Mile End Leisure Centre. When we got in touch to congratulate them on being selected for this project they wrote back to say they were “delighted, and indeed excited, over our selection for this prestigious and important project in Forest Hill.” More information about them can be found at www.robertslimbrick.co.uk.

The rest of the design team is WYG who’ll be the Structural Engineers and Building Services Partnership Ltd who’ll be the building services engineers. The Council’s programme for delivering the pools envisages that the design team now spends the next few months working up the final designs prior to the submission of a detailed planning application in April of next year. Construction would then start in June 2011 and the pools would open in December 2012. We are keen to ensure that the detailed proposals are consulted on as they are developed.

There are though a number of key issues we’d like to be resolved during this process. How will the Pools frontage work with Louise House and the Library? Is it possible to use this area to provide a coordinated entrance to and between each of the buildings, ideally one that doesn't require disabled users of the library to use the back of the building? Will the internal arrangement of the building work for the widest range of people? How will the building impact on its closest neighbours? We are hoping that the next stakeholder meeting will be used to focus on these issues and to start to refine a scheme that will really benefit Forest Hill Town Centre and become a well used destination for residents.

Louise House

There has also been recent progress on potential future uses for Louise House. Early in November, the Friends of Louise House submitted three different proposals:

• A serviced office scheme with a community

nursery;

• an arts centre; and

• the ownership of the building by the National Trust

Who was Janusz Korczak?

When English Heritage decided to list Louise House in Dartmouth Road Grade 2, one of the reasons given was the “decisive impression” it made on Janusz Korczak when he visited in 1911. Korczak is little known in this country but, as local historian, Steve Grindlay has been finding out, Forest Hill should be proud to be linked with his name.

Janusz Korczak was born Henryk Goldszmit in Warsaw in 1877. He took “Janusz Korczak” as a pen-name when he began writing in his early 20s. He studied medicine, became a paediatrician, a teacher and then worked in an orphanage, where he began developing his ideas about working with children.

In the Autumn of 1911, Korczak visited London. Political unrest in Warsaw, with rising anti-Semitism, left him uncertain about his future and he hoped his visit would relieve his depression.

While in London, he came to Forest Hill to visit the two industrial homes established here in the mid-1870s and see how they cared for destitute and orphaned children. Louise House and Shaftesbury House, Perry Rise (demolished a few years ago), were founded on principles similar to those Korczak was developing of giving respect, care and support to needy children.

His visit to the industrial homes made a deep impression on Korczak. He described how the girls had a laundry and were also taught sewing and embroidery. They walked each day to the local school (Kelvin Grove). Korczak also mentions an aquarium and rabbits, guinea pigs and pigeons kept as pets “like a miniature zoo”.

Thus inspired, Korczak returned to Warsaw to develop his own orphanage along similar lines to those he saw at Louise House.

Korczak believed that children had rights and his proposals were eventually incorporated into the United Nations 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child.

His orphanage thrived, his enlightened ideas influencing teachers across the world, until 1 September 1939 when Nazi Germany invaded Poland. In 1940, the Warsaw Ghetto was created, a small area of the city to which Jewish people were confined. Korczak was told that he would have to move his children and staff to premises within the ghetto. Korczak was given many opportunities to leave but each time he refused saying he would not abandon his children.

On the morning of 6 August 1942, German soldiers ordered the occupants of the orphanage to line up in the street. Korczak made sure his children were dressed in their best clothes and carried a favourite toy. The orphanage staff and 192 children were then herded through the streets of Warsaw towards the railway station with Korczak at their head. During that fateful walk, Korczak was again given the opportunity to escape and again refused. Eye-witnesses said that his only concern was to comfort, reassure and support his children. The group was forced onto a train bound for Treblinka extermination camp. That is the last that was heard of them.

To have such a courageous and principled person so strongly associated with our area is a rare privilege and something we should cherish and celebrate.

Korczak Links:

Wikipedia

Section of Korczak biography referring to Forest Hill

Biography from UNESCO

Holocaust Research Project

Forest Hill Ward Assembly

The 3rd Forest Hill Ward Assembly will be held on Wednesday 25th March at 7pm at the Living Springs International Church, 8-10 Devonshire Road (opposite the Hob), to discuss the £50,000 Mayor's Fund and the Forest Hill Pools.

The priorities for the Mayor's Fund are: Town Centre (empty shops), Youth Provision, Parking and Traffic Development, Lack of Community Facilities and Environmental Issues.

A local resident will be present to speak about the possibility of transforming Louise House into an Arts Centre and Theatre. This would also be a good opportunity for anyone wanting to put forward their views about the pools to speak to Councillors.

Back to Square One

On the 20th August 2008, it was announced that Louise House, part of the Forest Hill Pools site, had been listed Grade II by English Heritage following a request for listing from an individual living in the local area. This means that the recent feasibility options for the new pools will need to be rethought and the process begun again. This was completely fresh news at the Public Meeting held at The Methodist Church , Normanton Street, on the 21st August and attended by over 200 Forest Hill residents.

Louise House has been listed mainly because of its historical importance (as a Victorian Girls Industrial Home that took in girls suffering extreme poverty and trained them for work in Domestic Service) and the unaltered condition of the building. A number of these buildings were built in London but this is a rare surviving example. The listing also notes the importance of the building as a 'group' with the Library and the Pools Building, even though the Pools building itself has previously been considered and turned down for listing.

The problem (or opportunity) this causes is that Louise House was included as part of the site for the New Pools/leisure complex recently consulted on by Lewisham Council. It means that the options that were on the table are no longer achievable in their current form and additional work will be needed to find out what it is possible to deliver on the site.

When the Mayor announced in March that he was abandoning the original plan to refurbish the pools (intrusive surveys and discussions with potential developers persuaded him this was not feasible), he set a short timescale for delivering the pools (to be open by 2011) and this led to the 'rushed' production of feasibility options for the site and a public consultation during August, when unfortunately many people are away on holiday.

The options presented to residents were 3 versions of the same scheme, with more or less housing, leisure uses and open space on the site. The preliminary results from the consultation were presented to a stakeholder meeting on the 27th August. The Council received around 600 replies to the consultation and views were fairly evenly split between the 3 options with about 10% of respondents choosing not to select any of the options. The FHS submitted a response (the highlights of which are included in this Newsletter) raising a number of concerns about the proposals but mostly supporting the need for a new pool facility in Forest Hill in the foreseeable future and seeking to ensure a high quality building is developed – possibly secured through a design competition.

The public meeting on the 21st August was very lively and heard a wide range of views. It clearly demonstrated that the area does seem to be split on whether to try to keep parts of the existing Pools Building in the scheme or not. The main area of consensus seemed to be that we do want a new pool, that the consultation process had not been very good and that the 3 versions of the scheme proposed left a lot to be desired. The Listing of Louise House has helpfully given the Council a get-out from its previous 'options' and it was acknowledged that there is the opportunity for a significant rethink.

Meanwhile, the Stakeholder Group continues to meet.

It includes representatives from both the Forest Hill and Sydenham Societies, residents groups, swimming organisations and local schools. To clarify, the stakeholder group does not in any way set the agenda.

Rather it is a forum for the council to present its plans and the group to make comments and seek information. However, it does mean that the Forest Hill Society gets the chance to have an input into the process as things move forward.

The Forest Hill Society members of the Stakeholder group are Hilary Satchwell and Penelope Jarrett. Both are keen swimmers as well as enthusiastic residents of Forest Hill and Hilary has particular experience of architecture and planning issues.

One of the key issues now will be testing whether it is still possible to achieve the range of leisure/residential options on the site and what the new use should be for Louise House. If any members of the Society have any positive ideas for new uses for Louise House that may be able to attract funding and allow a small element of public access, we would be pleased to hear from you so we can feed these ideas into the process.

The next step will be a meeting of Mayor and Cabinet on the 17th September 2008 when the Mayor will make recommendations for how the project should continue.

If you have any particular comments on what you think should happen at the Pools please let Hilary or Penelope know (hilary@foresthillsociety.com or Penelope@foresthillsociety.com).

Louise House Listed

News reached us on 20th August that English Heritage, who have twice previously refused to list Forest Hill Pools, have decided to list Louise House including many of the internal features. What the future now holds for Louise House is uncertain as is the future of swimming in Forest Hill.

The three options presented by the council for the redevelopment of the pools are no longer possible and alternatives will need to be found.

For The Forest Hill Society our main concern now, as it has always been, is the future of swimming on this site. We call on the council to come up with innovative solutions to allow for a leisure centre on this site with two pools and community facilities. At present this looks like an onerous task, but the council need to find a way to make this possible within the new constraints. What must not be allowed to happen is for this decision to mark an end to swimming in Forest Hill.

The following day, on the 21st August, there was a public meeting to discuss the options for development of the site. 200 people attended the meeting where a range of views were expressed. Notes on the outcome of the meeting is available on Lewisham Council website.

At the Stakeholder Meeting on 27th August we found out some early results of the consultation. Although none of the options are possible following the listing of Louise House the results are still worth looking at. Of the 691 responses received:
Option 1 was preferred by 27% of respondents
Option 2 was preferred by 33% of respondents
Option 3 was preferred by 29% of respondents
11% expressed no preference.

The mayor and cabinet will meeting on 17th September and will be discussing the outcome of the consultation and development options.