Arlington House is a hostel for homeless men on Arlington Road in Camden Town, London that opened in 1905. It was designated as a Grade II listed building in 2011. [1]
Arlington House is a hostel for homeless men on Arlington Road in Camden Town, London that opened in 1905. It was designated as a Grade II listed building in 2011. [1]
Arlington House is the last and largest of the Rowton Houses to be built and is the only one to remain in use as a hostel. For its first 80 years since opening in 1905, it had a capacity for 1,200 tenants, later reduced to 400. It was refurbished in 2009 and opened as a conference centre, plus accommodation for 150 homeless, vulnerable, and low-income tenants. It has been described as the biggest homeless hostel in Europe, and home to more Irish men than any other building outside Ireland. [2]
Arlington House was taken over by Camden London Borough Council in the 1980s, but was subsequently privatised and later given without payment to One Housing Group (OHG) by the Novas Scarman group to ensure that building works were completed. As of 2016 [update] the building continued to be owned and managed by One Housing Group, having undergone major government-funded refurbishment, and reopened in 2010. [3] There was much criticism around this matter; see "What the press says", below.
One Housing Group issued a press release on 16 December 2009 in which they say that they would work with social enterprise partners City Dining, SPACE and Broadway. According to the press release, City Dining was proposing to provide catering for residents and staff at Arlington and training for a group of customers, with the aim of offering them permanent positions. SPACE was proposing to run an art studio and creative space for residents, and eventually to develop opportunities for creative and media training. Broadway were in discussions to deliver an employment and training service for residents, and setting up a Business Centre providing training, conference and business support facilities. [4]
In a 4 March 2010 press release OHG said that the refurbished Arlington House would be a modern building with 95 high-quality units for homeless people, 35 sub-market-rent flats, and 3,000 m2 of "social economy and training" space. The building was to reopen after refurbishment with government investment. [5]
Arlington House was opened after completion of major rebuilding by Mayor of London Boris Johnson on 10 June 2010. [6] In 2016 it called itself "Arlington Conference Centre, part of One Housing Group", described as "a multipurpose hub of commercial and support services", having also "95 residential rooms for homeless and vulnerable adults and 44 studio flats for low-income workers as well as the Conference Centre. Arlington also has a range of social economy partners who rent office spaces and artist studios." [7] After reopening it was visited by several well-known people, including Tracey Emin, Iain Duncan Smith, Nick Clegg, and Prince Charles. [8] [9]
The Aisling Project was involved with the Irish Tenants Association of Arlington House, [10] who constituted about a third of the residents before refurbishment. These tenants were generally older than the others and had lived in the hostel for longer.
George Orwell lived in one of the Rowton Houses and wrote about the experience in Down and Out in Paris and London , his semi-autobiographical account of living in poverty in both cities. Brendan Behan also lived in Arlington House. [11]
The Pogues reference Arlington House in the song "Transmetropolitan" by Shane MacGowan from their 1984 album Red Roses for Me .
"Arlington House - address, no fixed abode" is the first line of the 1984 top 20 song "One Better Day" by Camden pop group Madness. The song is about homeless people, and Arlington House features in the accompanying video. [12]
Irish-born photographer Deirdre O'Callaghan spent four years photographing the men of Arlington House for a personal photographic project, and her first book, Hide That Can, resulted. Published in 2002 by Trolley in London, it was awarded Book of the Year by both the International Centre of Photography in New York and Les Rencontres de la Photographie in Arles.
Men of Arlington is a 2011 documentary film directed by Enda Hughes that portrays the tragedies and triumphs of the emigrant Irish in London. [13]
Camden Town, often shortened to Camden, is an area in the London Borough of Camden, around 2.5 miles (4.1 km) north-northwest of Charing Cross. Historically in Middlesex, it is identified in the London Plan as one of 34 major centres in Greater London.
Centre Point is a building in Central London, comprising a 34-storey tower; a 9-storey block to the east including shops, offices, retail units and maisonettes; and a linking block between the two at first-floor level. It occupies 101–103 New Oxford Street and 5–24 St Giles High Street, WC1, with a frontage also to Charing Cross Road, close to St Giles Circus and almost directly above Tottenham Court Road tube station. The site was once occupied by a gallows, and the tower sits directly over the former route of St Giles High Street, which had to be re-routed for the construction.
Arlington House may refer to:
The Church Army is an evangelistic organisation and mission community founded in 1882 in association with the Church of England and now operating internationally in many parts of the Anglican Communion.
Centrepoint is a charity in the United Kingdom which provides accommodation and support to homeless people aged 16–25. The Prince of Wales has been a patron of the organization since 2005; his first patronage. His mother Diana, Princess of Wales, was patron of the organization before she died.
Rowton Houses was a chain of hostels built in London, England, by the Victorian philanthropist Lord Rowton to provide decent accommodation for working men in place of the squalid lodging houses of the time.
The Iveagh Trust is a provider of affordable housing in and around Dublin, Ireland. It was initially a component of the Guinness Trust, founded in 1890 by Edward Cecil Guinness, 1st Earl of Iveagh, great-grandson of the founder of the Guinness Brewery, to help homeless people in Dublin and London. It is not otherwise related to the brewery company.
Single Homeless Project is a registered charity working to help single Londoners by preventing homelessness, providing support and accommodation, promoting wellbeing, enhancing opportunity and being a voice for change.
In England and Wales, squatting— taking possession of land or an empty house the squatter does not own—is a criminal or civil offense, depending on circumstances. People squat for a variety of reasons which include needing a home, protest, poverty, and recreation. Many squats are residential; some are also opened as social centres. Land may be occupied by New Age travellers or treesitters.
United House Developments is a property development and housebuilding company based in Southampton Street, London. It is active in the construction of social housing, urban regeneration, refurbishment and Public Private Partnerships (PPP).
The St Mungo Community Housing Association, working as St Mungo's, is a charity registered in England to help homeless people.
One Housing Group is a housing association based in London and the south east of the United Kingdom. They manage 16,000 homes and provide support to residents who needs special help, through their social care arm, One Support. As of 2015-16, they had an annual turnover of £255m and employed ~1800 staff.
Public housing in the United Kingdom, also known as council housing or social housing, provided the majority of rented accommodation until 2011 when the number of households in private rental housing surpassed the number in social housing. Dwellings built for public or social housing use are built by or for local authorities and known as council houses. Since the 1980s non-profit housing associations became more important and subsequently the term "social housing" became widely used, as technically council housing only refers to housing owned by a local authority, though the terms are largely used interchangeably.
The National Communities Resource Centre (NCRC) is a British charity which was set up in 1991 to offer support and training to residents in low-income areas. It runs courses for tenants and community groups from its premises near Chester. Since 2020 it has been part of Regenda Group, a company which provides and operates affordable housing.
Focus E15 is a campaign group formed in London in 2013 by a group of mothers threatened with eviction from their emergency accommodation in a hostel for young homeless people in Newham. The group squatted empty flats on the Carpenters Estate in Stratford in September 2014, drawing widespread attention in the mainstream media. Most of the young women were eventually rehoused within the borough, as they had requested. Having won their own battle, they have continued to protest both against the local housing policy of Newham Council and for housing rights more generally. They have done so by occupying various buildings and supporting different individual struggles.
Squatting in the Republic of Ireland is the occupation of unused land or derelict buildings without the permission of the owner. In the 1960s, the Dublin Housing Action Committee highlighted the housing crisis by squatting buildings. From the 1990s onwards there have been occasional political squats in Cork and Dublin such as Grangegorman, the Barricade Inn, the Bolt Hostel, Connolly Barracks, That Social Centre and James Connolly House.
Our Lady of Hal is the Catholic parish church for the Camden Town area of London. The church was completed in 1933, and was under the authority of the Missionary Fathers of Scheut in Belgium until it came under the Catholic Diocese of Westminster in 1982. The church is the site for the English shrine to Our Lady of Hal, a medieval statue believed to be miraculous, in Halle, Belgium.
Thomas Joseph Byrne was an English architect, and was principal architect to the Office of Public Works in Ireland who oversaw the restoration of a large number of public buildings in Dublin following the Easter Rising, the Irish War of Independence and the Irish Civil War.
Arlington Road is a street running between Mornington Crescent and Camden Town in the London Borough of Camden, England. It runs south to north, directly parallel to Camden High Street to its east. It is crossed by Inverness Street, Parkway and Delancey Street. It is near Gloucester Crescent. It is mainly residential, with a few commercial properties.
The Revolutionary Housing League (RHL) is an Irish Socialist Republican housing activist and direct action group that was founded in 2022 by another group called the Revolutionary Workers Union (RWU) during the RWU's squatting of a building at 12-14 Eden Quay, Dublin which it called "James Connolly House".