Trinity Green Needs Friends

(Click this image to enlarge)

Trinity Green Almshouses in Mile End only survive because some illustrious friends saved these distinguished and benign examples of social housing, which were built at the end of the seventeenth century under the supervision of Sir Christopher Wren.

CR Ashbee, founder of the Guild of Handicrafts at Essex House, was so dismayed to see the destruction of a palace in Bow which once belonged to James I, he launched a campaign in 1895 to rescue Trinity Green Almshouses when demolition and redevelopment were suggested upon the implausible premise that it would be too expensive to repair the drains.

With the vocal support of William Morris, Octavia Hill, Lord Leighton, Walter Besant and many others, Ashbee succeeded in his goal and Trinity Green became the first historic building in the East End to be saved for posterity. As part of his campaign, he published a handsome monograph, surveying and recording the building in detail, from which the drawings here are reproduced. This monograph became the origin of the Survey of London which continues to this day.

Today, Trinity Green needs friends again to counter the neglect of the fabric of recent years and to challenge the development by Sainsbury’s which proposes a tower of luxury flats the height of Centrepoint overshadowing the almshouses. So please click here and sign up to become a Friend of Trinity Green and – by doing so – continue the work of CR Ashbee, William Morris, Octavia Hill, Lord Leighton, Walter Besant and all those involved at this crucial site for the Conservation Movement.

Already, as a consequence of the influence of the newly-formed Friends of Trinity Green, Historic England have written a letter of support which condemns the height of the Sainsbury’s luxury block and challenges Tower Hamlets Council with a Public Enquiry if they approve the current plan.