Twenty-Two Cottage Homes at Barnardo's, Redbridge, London

Description

937/0/10066 TANNERS LANE
05-MAY-10 BARKINGSIDE
Twenty-two cottage homes at Barnardo's

GV II
Twenty-two identical cottage homes, two of 1879, eighteen of 1887, and two of 1903, by Ebenezer Gregg for Dr Barnardo. Listed for exterior fabric only, apart from the well-preserved Cambridge Cottage which is listed for its interior too.

PLAN: Sixteen cottages are arranged in a horseshoe shape around the village green, the curve at the western end evidencing a former field boundary. A further two are situated to the east, near the entrance lodge. These eighteen were constructed in 1887, to designs by Ebenezer Gregg, with some input, in particular on the interior décor, from Dr Barnardo himself. A further four cottages face south and are located behind the southern stretch on the green. These were built in 1879 (the pair to the east) and 1903 (to the west), also in Gregg's Old English-style design.

EXTERIORS: The two-storey stock brick cottages have rough-cast and half-timbered gables with wood bargeboards, tiled pitched roofs and tall brick chimneys. Each has a central four-panelled door with a rubbed brick flat arch and a timber porch with tiled roof. To each side of the door is a five-light canted bay window, and above a three-light window. All the windows are timber sashes. The returns and rear elevations are plainer, with small half-timber gables and bargeboards to the upper-storey windows and rubbed brick flat arches to the other windows and doors. The two cottages of 1879 have dedication stones set in the bay windows and these, and the two of 1903, have glazed mustard-coloured terracotta plaques above the doors giving their names.

Four of the cottages, located on the north side of the green, have been extended at the rear and joined in pairs. Others on the north side have iron fire escape stairs on the return elevations. All the cottages on the south side of the green have had new houses built up against their rear walls, resulting in the demolition of the rear portions of the cottages. The roof profile of the new houses, however, matches the old cottages and both are brick-built. All the cottages have disabled access ramps running up to the front door.

INTERIORS: Not of special interest, excepting Cambridge Cottage (below). On the north side of the green, all the cottages inspected have boarded-in staircase balusters and the stairs have been altered at the upper floor landing. At least some plank panelling, ventilation shafts, cornices or mantelshelves survive in every house in this section, but in no cottage bar Cambridge is the survival consistent or substantial. Several houses have had the front two dormitories knocked through into a larger room, even more have had the mother's sitting room opened out into the dining room. The seven cottages to the south of the green and the additional four behind them have been extended and converted into flats and the original staircases removed. They retain no original features inside except for the vestiges of the plan.

CAMBRIDGE COTTAGE: Cambridge Cottage has the same external appearance as the other cottages but differs in having a well-preserved interior, which was restored in 2005. Here, the original standard plan of all the cottages can be appreciated. Inside the door is a hall corridor with a patterned tiled floor, plank panelling to dado height and coat pegs attached to the walls. Off to the left of the corridor was a sitting room for 'Mother' and the dining room; off to the right the girls' playroom and a bathroom. The corridor leads through to the staircase, located to the rear of the house and lit by a skylight. Beyond the staircase were the kitchen, scullery, larder and WCs. Upstairs, there were four dormitories, the one to the rear of the house with an adjoining linen room, and a bedroom for 'Mother'.

All the main rooms had skirting boards, plank panelling to dado height, picture rails and fireplaces and Cambridge Cottage has most of these features intact, bar the fireplaces. The position of the original fireplaces is traceable in many of the rooms, however, through a chimney breast or hearth stone. The doors have been replaced but their heavily moulded architraves survive. There are also ventilation shafts to facilitate the circulation of air. The Mother's sitting and bedrooms did not originally have plank panelling. There is a hatch with door in between the Mother's sitting room and the dining room, presumably for supervising the girls. The kitchen and scullery have corner chimney flues, which once contained cast iron ranges, although the corridor running between them has been removed. The timber stair has turned newel posts, stick balusters and a timber handrail and the stairwell is panelled to dado height. Cambridge Cottage is at National Grid Reference TQ4453989630.

HISTORY: Thomas John Barnardo (1845-1905) arrived in Barkingside in 1874, having been given Mossford Lodge, a large house and grounds, as a wedding present by Sir John Sands. Dr Barnardo had many such admirers, particularly from Christian evangelical backgrounds, due to his zealous charitable work with the destitute children of London's East End. His marriage in 1873 and the gift of Mossford Lodge lent Barnardo the moral propriety and the means to focus more of his attention on the plight of penniless girls. Barnardo and his wife lived in the house and accommodated twelve girls in its stable block. The arrangement was not an immediate success, however, partly because the girls were difficult to control. Thus in 1876, Barnardo began building a 'Village Home'. This was to be a series of cottages arranged around a green, each under the care of a 'Mother', and promised a domestic, familial environment in which to nurture the girls. Funds for the first cottage were given as a memorial to a dead child and in 1876 fourteen cottages were opened by Lord Cairns, then Lord Chancellor, along with a Governor's House and laundry. The cottages were similar in elevation to a plan for a pair of labourers' cottages shown at the Great Exhibition in 1851 by Henry Robert. Subsequent homes were built as funds became available, each named by its benefactor. Hence, some are named for institutions (Oxford, Cambridge), others flowers (Pink Clover), others virtues (Peace, Hope) and some as memorials (such as Eton Cottage, which bears a plaque reading 'In memory of my son AR').

The idea of village homes was not a new one. In 1867, the Farningham and Swanley Homes for Boys, Kent was founded on similar principles and the Princess Mary Homes in Addlestone, Surrey opened in 1870; both were inspired by similar institutions in France and Germany. Yet Barnardo's Village Home was the most famous, the largest, and is the only one of these first three English examples where the cottages survive. (Only the lodge and chapel survive at Farningham and nothing at Addlestone).

The girls lived around twenty to a house and employed themselves in housework, laundry, needlework and basic school lessons. The aspiration was that the girls would find employment as laundresses, dressmakers' assistants, or in domestic service, but the number taken in by the Village Home (1,000 lived there in 1905) and the 'ever open door' policy made this difficult. Thus, from the 1880s, Dr Barnardo began to sponsor the emigration of children to Canada. Barnardo took a party of boys to Canada in 1882, girls in 1883, and by 1884 he had established an 'industrial farm' in Manitoba to provide work for the boys. The policy was not uncontroversial: Dr Barnardo was under investigation for kidnapping on at least three occasions, having sent away children without the permission of their parents. Many children suffered in their new homes, from ill-health, from overwork on Canada's farms, and, in some cases, from serious abuse. By 1906, 13,000 boys and 5,000 girls had emigrated, to the end that in 1901 some 0.3 percent of Canada's population had come from a Barnardo's Home.

By Barnardo's death in 1905 there were 64 cottage homes arranged around three greens (built in 1876-80, 1887, and 1903-5). The gardens were landscaped, with gravel paths, rose bowers, fountains, specimen trees, and benches. Barnardo's ashes were interred in the centre of one of the village greens, after an extensive funeral cortege had progressed from the East End, via train, with thousands paying their respects. His resting place, on what is now the southern edge of the village, is marked with a memorial by George Frampton RA (1860-1928), erected in 1908 (qv). The second half of the C20 saw the demolition of much of the previous era's building efforts, however. All the cottages around the southern green of 1976-80 and the majority around the south-western green of 1903-5 were demolished along with the schools, hospital, Governor's House and Mossford Lodge.

SOURCES: Anon, My Cottage: A Story of Dr Barnardo's Village Home for Destitute Girls by M.E.S. (1884)
Mrs Eyrie-Louise Barnardo and James Marchant, Memoirs of the late Dr Barnardo (1907)
Janet Hitchman, They Carried the Sword (1966)
National Portrait Gallery, The Camera and Dr Barnardo (1974)
Gillian Wagner, 'Barnardo, Thomas John (1845-1905)' in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004)
Plans and photographs in Redbridge Local Studies Library

REASONS FOR DESIGNATION: The twenty-two cottages at the former Girls Village Home at Barkingside are listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:
* early date: the two cottages from 1879 and the eighteen from 1887 are early and rare-surviving instances of purpose-built homes for destitute children;
* architectural interest: Olde English style cottages designed to contrast with contemporary barrack-like industrial schools, and to appeal to a sentimental notion of domesticity harboured by Barnardo and his supporters;
* historic interest: a physical manifestation of late Victorian philanthropy and ideas about childhood, with two cottages bearing original dedication stones;
* historical associations: Dr Barnardo considered the Village Home his principal achievement and the cottages became a symbol of the charity, with even its collecting boxes taking their form;
* intactness: Cambridge Cottage has particular interest in having a well-preserved interior, which evidences the original plan and features in the other more altered cottages;
* group value as part of an early, well-preserved and extremely rare example of a Victorian cottage home settlement, completed with village green and Children's Church (qv).

Reasons for Listing

Dr Barnardo was a major figure in Victorian England and the history of the charity he founded is of manifold significance, not least to the descendants of the thousands of children he helped. Dr Barnardo's Girls' Village Home at Barkingside was not only his magnum opus, but also his place of rest, and was the emblem of the charity's mission well into the C20. The Village survives today as a remarkable physical manifestation of the strengths and weaknesses of Barnardo the man, and the character of Victorian charity, a highly-esteemed virtue in the C19. It evidences both the sentimental and nostalgic aspects of Victorian charitable foundations, as well as the sometimes severe treatment of children in that era, in particular through the story of emigration to Canada. Even lacking many of its communal buildings, and nearly two-thirds of its original cottages, the Barnardo's Girls Village Homes at Barkingside is a special place. For reasons of their special architectural and historic interest, as well as group value, the central components of the Village -- the Children's Church, Cairns Cottage, and the twenty-two surviving cottage homes -- are recommended for listing at Grade II. The fountain, lodge, and boundary walls are recommended too, mainly for their group value as handsome and integral components of the ensemble, which form an essential part of the setting of the cottage homes. Athlone and Linney Houses, both later, less interesting architecturally, and more detached from the main green, are not recommended for listing. A separate advice (UID 170024) recommends that the memorial to Dr Barnardo, currently listed at Grade II, be upgraded to Grade II*.

External Links

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