I feel guilty. The Dorset Estate has been staring me in the face for the last six months. And I've ignored it. My excuse is I was waiting for the perfect crisp, clear January morning to take some photos.
Designed by Skinner, Bailey & Lubetkin and finished in 1957, the main buildings are two 11-storey Y-shaped blocks called George Loveless House and James Hammett House.
Approaching from Columbia Road you arrive at the south-side of the Y, bathed in morning sunshine.
But you can also approach from Diss Street, just off Hackney Road.
Or from Ravenscroft Park.
Aligned with the geometry of the main buildings are six lower blocks - James Brine House - which is actually four separate four-storey blocks and then two more - Robert Owen and Arthur Wade houses.
Altogether there are 266 homes on the estate.
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| James Brine House |
A small community centre, the Dorset Social Club, was also built on the site and still looks in use today.
On the east of the estate on Ravenscroft Road is the Ravenscroft pub, seen here with Sivill House in the background.
At the top of each of the buildings is a decorative oval, featuring human silhouettes.
Dorset Social Club is certainly in use. Downstairs was once a public library - which i sadly watched Tower Hamlets Council clear out last week. Perhaps there are plans to extend the seemly growing in popularity social club. I have not ventured in. . . but, heard you can only attend if a resident or so accompanied. Being a resident of George Loveless House on Diss Street (best London address ever!) and having a fab view of the lush interior it is inevitable I shall eventually make my way down.
ReplyDeleteLoveless is the right word. Mind you, Diss is Latin for hell.
ReplyDeleteAll I can say is this is great designed tower.
ReplyDeletecondo Philippines
George Loveless and James Hammett were two of the 'Tolpuddle Martyrs' - Dorset farm labourers who were sentenced to seven years transportation to Australia in 1834 for daring to form a trade union. These blocks were built and named in less cynical times when these places were honestly intended to express a well meaning and more purposeful sense of social and communal solidarity.
ReplyDeleteThat "decorative piece of concrete" wasn't a piece of artwork. It was the frame for a sign that used to be there. Can't remember exactly what it was although faint recall suggests that a logo along the lines of the Blind Beggar of Bethal Green and his daughter were portrayed thereon.
ReplyDeleteThe Old Dorset Library was shut down over 2 years ago due to lack of funding. It has recently been leased out to a self funded charitable organisation who are going to use it for community events.
ReplyDeleteGeorge loveless House building is now an icon on the Dorset Estate
ReplyDeleteWho was Arthur Wade??
ReplyDeleteAh, just discovered
Deletehttp://mylondontravels.blogspot.co.uk/2011/05/dorset-in-bethnal-green.html
named after a Chartist.
http://richardjohnbr.blogspot.co.uk/2007/09/chartist-lives-arthur-wade.html
who, " led with Robert Owen the great Tolpuddle demonstration of 21st April 1834" and who "died of apoplexy in a tailor’s shop on Regent Street, London, on 17th November 1845." aged 58.
Thanks for the blog.
The Dorset Estate was part of the lowering of municipal architecture in the 1950s and 1960s, when local authorities were encouraged to the kind of socialism that provided quality homes for their residents rather than leaving it to barely accountable housing associations and the property market.
ReplyDeleteNamed for severely punished socialist heroes, the estate is an impressive work, although perhaps because of widespread enthusiasm for modernity and its stilll-unproven building materials, or because of the egotism of its architect, bad structural choices were made, which cost the owner, Tower Hamlets council, big money this century to rectify. Happily, for leaseholders of the flats, the council made a paperwork error that meant it had to swallow much of the cost (one of the untold stories of London).
Not far away, incidentally, is Arnold Circus, designed, I seem to recall a BBC programme http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01kvkw6 said, by a young civil servant rather than a trained architect and still one of the world's most beautiful public housing projects. http://www.british-history.ac.uk/ It is also said to be the first such.
Typo in the 1st sentence of my comment: should be “flowering” not “lowering”. Some people, of course, will see socialist ideas as lowering, but I assure you, it was an error.
ReplyDeleteBizarre that you have not mentioned the incredible grand central staircases.
ReplyDeleteWe will be organising a charity race night in the social club on 8th February (doors open at 8pm). Tickets will be £5 each and you will be able to see inside if you book tickets. Racing starts at 9pm. All proceeds will go towards finishing the Stairway to Heaven Memorial - the memorial that is partially built next to Bethnal Green underground station to honour the worst civilian disaster of World War 2 - the Bethnal Green tube shelter disaster. We just need to raise the last £77k in order to complete the memorial to the 'forgotten disaster'. To book tickets contact the Stairway to Heaven Memorial Trust charity office on 077324 60444
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