The Royal Victoria Patriotic Building is a large Victorian building in a

Gothic Revival Gothic Revival (also referred to as Victorian Gothic, neo-Gothic, or Gothick) is an architectural movement that began in the late 1740s in England. The movement gained momentum and expanded in the first half of the 19th century, as increasingly ...

style combining Scottish Baronial and French

Châteauesque Châteauesque (or Francis I style,Whiffen, Marcus, ''American Architecture Since 1780: A guide to the styles'', The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1969, p. 142. or in Canada, the Château Style) is a Revivalist architectural style based on the ...

. It is located off Trinity Road in

Wandsworth Wandsworth Town () is a district of south London, within the London Borough of Wandsworth southwest of Charing Cross. The area is identified in the London Plan as one of 35 major centres in Greater London. Toponymy Wandsworth takes its nam ...

, London. It was built in 1859 as the Royal Victoria Patriotic School, by popular subscription as an asylum for girls orphaned during the

Crimean War The Crimean War, , was fought from October 1853 to February 1856 between Russia and an ultimately victorious alliance of the Ottoman Empire, France, the United Kingdom and Piedmont-Sardinia. Geopolitical causes of the war included the ...

. It is a Grade II* Listed Building designed by the architect Major Rohde Hawkins.British Listed Buildings: Former Royal Victoria Patriotic School, Wandsworth
Retrieved 8 June 2012.

Architecture

Exterior

The building's architect was Major Rohde Hawkins (1821–84). It is made of yellow brick with York stone dressings. It consists of three storeys arranged around two courtyards separated by a central main hall. There is an additional single-storey court on the east side. The roof is steeply pitched with slate. The metal-framed windows are mullioned and transomed. The style is a combination of Scottish baronial, Jacobean and French

architecture. There are five major towers (three at the front) with pyramidal roofs, and many smaller corner turrets (tourelles). The central tower at the front has a projecting frontispiece three storeys high; above it is a statue of

St George and the Dragon In a legend, Saint Georgea soldier venerated in Christianitydefeats a dragon. The story goes that the dragon originally extorted tribute from villagers. When they ran out of livestock and trinkets for the dragon, they started giving up a human ...

in a niche.

Interior

Much of the interior detail has now been lost, so the interior is mostly quite plain; some rooms have surviving boarded roofs. A wallplate in the main hall has carved foliage. The main hall's roof is in three sections; it was painted by J.G. Crace.

History

Nineteenth century

The Royal Victoria Patriotic Building is a Grade 2

listed building In the United Kingdom, a listed building or listed structure is one that has been placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Historic Environment Scotland in Scotland, in Wales, and the Northern I ...

on the edge of

Wandsworth Common Wandsworth Common is a public common in Wandsworth, in the London Borough of Wandsworth, south London. It is and is maintained and regulated by Wandsworth Council. It is also a Ward of the London Borough of Wandsworth. The population of the ward ...

, South West London. It was built as the school of the Royal Victoria Patriotic Asylum on land enclosed from Wandsworth Common, one of 53 such enclosures made (lawfully) in the years between 1794 and 1866. The building was designed by Rohde Hawkins in the then popular Gothic style. The foundation stone was laid by

Queen Victoria Victoria (Alexandrina Victoria; 24 May 1819 – 22 January 1901) was Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 20 June 1837 until her death in 1901. Her reign of 63 years and 216 days was longer than that of any previ ...

on 11 July 1857; the building was completed in only 18 months. The rapid construction was facilitated by offsite prefabrication of many components such as cast iron windows, stone dressings, roof trusses, iron floor joists and decorative pieces of leadwork. The money for the building came from Prince Albert's Royal Patriotic Fund, which raised nearly £1.5 million by public subscription for the widows and orphans of soldiers killed in the

. However, only £35,000 was actually used in the building's construction by George Myers of Lambeth. The orphans lived in hard conditions; they had to pump water up to the tanks in the building's towers, do all the washing, and be washed outside in cold water. When the installed warm air heating system failed, no fireplaces were built in the orphans' quarters. The orphans were reportedly abused by the rector, one orphan dying as a result, leading to a scandal.

Twentieth century

During the

First World War World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll, one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, ...

, the building was requisitioned by the

War Office The War Office was a department of the British Government responsible for the administration of the British Army between 1857 and 1964, when its functions were transferred to the new Ministry of Defence (MoD). This article contains text from ...

to create the 3rd London General Hospital, a facility for the

Royal Army Medical Corps The Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC) is a specialist corps in the British Army which provides medical services to all Army personnel and their families, in war and in peace. The RAMC, the Royal Army Veterinary Corps, the Royal Army Dental Corps ...

to treat military casualties. It was refurbished with stronger roof trusses, repointed brickwork, new Westmoreland slates on the roof, and a new heating system. The field behind the hospital was packed with marquees holding about 1,800 soldiers wounded at the front; many thousands of soldiers were treated at the hospital during the war. After the First World War, the building reverted to its earlier use as the Royal Victoria Patriotic School, still for girls, until the children were evacuated to Wales in 1939. During the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposi ...

MI5 The Security Service, also known as MI5 ( Military Intelligence, Section 5), is the United Kingdom's domestic counter-intelligence and security agency and is part of its intelligence machinery alongside the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), G ...

interrogators including 'spycatcher' Colonel Oreste Pinto interviewed over 30,000 immigrants to the UK at the euphemistically named "London Reception Centre" in the building over a period of four years. After the Second World War, the building initially housed a teachers' training college. In 1952 it was bought by

London County Council London County Council (LCC) was the principal local government body for the County of London throughout its existence from 1889 to 1965, and the first London-wide general municipal authority to be directly elected. It covered the area today kn ...

; from 1955 it housed Honeywell Secondary Mixed School, followed by Spencer Park Comprehensive School for Boys until 1974. As the building aged, it became structurally unsafe and the school moved to a new building. From 1974, the Royal Victoria Patriotic Building fell into disrepair, losing most of its windows, and thousands of feral pigeons moved in. Thieves stole lead from the roofs and water tanks, allowing rain into the building's fabric:

dry rot Dry rot is wood decay caused by one of several species of fungi that digest parts of the wood which give the wood strength and stiffness. It was previously used to describe any decay of cured wood in ships and buildings by a fungus which resul ...

then destroyed much of the timber structure including floors and door frames. The building came under threat of demolition, but was saved by campaigning by the

Victorian Society The Victorian Society is a UK amenity society and membership organisation that campaigns to preserve and promote interest in Victorian and Edwardian architecture and heritage built between 1837 and 1914 in England and Wales. It is a registered ...

and the Wandsworth Society, and became a Grade II listed building. In 1980 the

Greater London Council The Greater London Council (GLC) was the top-tier local government administrative body for Greater London from 1965 to 1986. It replaced the earlier London County Council (LCC) which had covered a much smaller area. The GLC was dissolved in 198 ...

(GLC), successor to London County Council, granted a lease with the option to buy the building for £1 to a developer, Tuberg Property Company. Restoration took six years. Just before formal handover by the GLC, the main hall with its elaborate hammer beam ceiling was destroyed by arson. The hall was fully restored from a photographic survey which luckily had been made two weeks earlier. The Civic Trust awarded a commendation in 1985 for the hall ceiling. In 1987 the Civic Trust awarded another commendation for the restoration of the building as a whole. Also in 1987, the restoration won the Europa Nostra Order of Merit.

Use

The building was refurbished in the 1980s, and now houses a variety of small businesses, 29 flats and the "Le Gothique" restaurant. The restaurant hosts the Wandsworth Common Beer Festival twice a year.

References

{{Reflist

External links

ALRA

Wandsworth Common
Grade II* listed educational buildings Scottish baronial architecture Grade II* listed buildings in the London Borough of Wandsworth