Join the campaign to save the Jewish Maternity Hospital in east London

November 2011

One of east London’s key buildings from the philanthropic era of the early 20th-century is under immediate threat of demolition. The former Jewish Maternity Hospital in Underwood Road, Bethnal Green, is due to be flattened by its owner, the Peabody Housing Association after the council gave consent last week.

Veteran east London campaigner, Tom Ridge, has been fighting to save the building, and his story has recently been covered on the cult blog Spitalfields Life. Tom has also organised an on-line petition which SAVE urges readers to sign.

The hospital is a handsome Arts and Crafts building designed by John Myers and built in 1911. It is of red brick, with a distinctive crow-stepped gable - the original doors and ironwork remain. The building forms an important part of the streetscape (this has even been acknowledged by the council) and represents an important survival in an area which has suffered badly from clearance and insensitive development over the past few decades.

The building functioned as a hospital from 1911 to 1947 under the direction of Alice Model MBE. More commonly known as the Mother Levy’s Nursing Home, the hospital was the first in Britain to provide home helps and maternity nurses. Many well-known East Enders including Alma Cogan, Arnold Wesker and Lionel Bart were born there.

The Petition asks Peabody to keep and convert the front parts of 22 & 24 Underwood Road as a small but important remnant of the hospital and as a memorial to the pioneering achievements of Model.

SAVE has written to Peabody expressing is sadness and surprise at the charity’s plans to demolish the building.

‘Peabody has a good track record in recognising the community importance of its built heritage - and an excellent reputation for valuing and maintaining its earlier housing - but here the charity has shown neither sensitivity or vision’ says SAVE’s Secretary, William Palin ‘We hope this does not usher in a new age of philistinism from an organisation renowned for its innovation.’

SAVE has formally requested an opportunity to commission an alternative scheme for the site to show how it would be possible to retain the existing buildings and incorporate them into a new development.

You may wish to write to Stephen Howlett, CEO of Peabody, to object to the demolition: stephen.howlett@peabody.org.uk

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