The lost buildings of Canning Town Women's Settlement

Sunday 10 March 2024

In the second of three articles on this important local social institution, Aldersbrook resident and historian Jane Skelding traces the various locations occupied by the Canning Town Women's Settlement.

The Canning Town Women’s Settlement was not just a single office or club room. The organisation grew and expanded continuously during its life from 1892-1968. It ran several sites which included residences for workers, offices, medical buildings and even an ex-public house, however, none of these buildings have survived due to bombing in WW2 or later development. This means there are few traces of this dynamic organisation that created spaces for the local Canning Town people to find recreation, education, medical and employment help for over 75 years. This article will trace some of these buildings and their locations to help memorialise this work.

For the first ten years the CTWS did not have a purpose-built home. The settlement rented ordinary houses on Barking Road, and moved around according to size and need. The CTWS engaged in ceaseless fundraising for purpose-built buildings, relying on donations from wealthy benefactors as well as the local women who were part of the clubs. There were three main types of building - residences, work and medical scattered around the area is in the map below.

London Sheet L, Revised: 1913 to 1915, published 1920. Source:here

Lees Hall - Settlement work building 

1916 map shows Lees Hall on Barking Road, Source: here

The CTWS started by renting buildings on Barking Road (135-137), settling on 81 Barking Road by 1898 and this was their main office and meeting place, often referred to as Lees Hall after the benefactor who funded it. The name conjures images of a grand building but was a terraced house which had been refurbished. Unfortunately, this stretch of road has been redeveloped however we do have interior pictures from the Annual Report of 1899 which shows the drawing room and back room of this site.

These are valuable glimpses into the real life of the work. The William Morris wallpaper and furnishings with heavily patterned carpets all follow the model of Toynbee Hall. The settlement wanted the visitors however poor to feel welcome, but also that they are somewhere comfortable which has been decorated with care and respect.

Drawing Room (CTWS Eighth Annual Report, 1899)

In 1899 the settlement bought 81 Barking Road and in 1900 erected an ‘iron hall’ to the rear where larger work parties and gatherings could be accommodated. The outside yard was also used for exercise as in the photo below.

Photo on various websites

In 1915 a final new Lees Hall was built and described in the Annual Report

 “Our ‘new’ Lees Hall is indeed well used, and is more and more becoming a home for our people, who seem always ‘Eager to come in, and loth to go.’ “ It had three floors for work rooms, meeting rooms and classes. “The Parlour, our largest and best Class Room, is delightfully quiet and cosy, and many happy associations already cluster round it.” (p.9 Annual Report of CTWS, 1915)

This hall seemed to endure and was mentioned in Rebecca Cheetham’s memorial in 1939, although no photos have been found. The site seems vacant on maps from the 1950s and in 1962 it was acquired by a Catholic charirty to house out of work seafarers, which is now known as Anchor House (recently renamed to Your Place) and is still a homeless charity (see here)

Residences

The settlement workers lived separately from the offices and as with the work buildings it took several years to establish a permanent home. The first residences for the settlement workers were located in rented houses at 457, 459 and 461 Barking Road, another residence was added at 19 St Andrews Road in 1901, and these houses were used until a permanent residence was built in 1908.

 

This is a picture of the Residence in 1907, by this time several houses had been knocked together. These houses have survived and are still residential terraced houses (see google street view). The same 1907 report says it was too busy and noisy, so new accommodation was sought to build a new residence. 

The Residence (CTWS Sixteenth Annual Report, 1907)

A new purpose-built residence in Cumberland Road, known as the Settlement House, was built in 1908-1909 (pictured below) and was designed by Clapham Lauder. This building has also gone but it was a sizeable property located second on the right as you enter the street from Barking Road.

CTWS Seventeenth Annual Report, 1908

Hospital and Nurses Home

The hospital and nursing homes also started in repurposed buildings until a hospital was built in 1905.

When the Medical Mission was taken over it was housed in repurposed buildings at 520 and 522 Barking Road. The interior photo below shows one of the wards in the Barking Road building where a ward was a large sitting room or bedroom.

'Mary' ward at the hospital (CTWS Ninth Annual Report, 1900)

Balaam Street Hospital

In 1905 a purpose-built hospital was opened on Balaam Street. This picture from the annual report shows the opening of the new hospital with some building detail in the background. A 1947 report states that the building was ‘blitzed five times’ and the work was closed down.

Opening of Balaam Street, probably no 120 (CTWS Annual Report, 1905)

The final Medical Mission was on Quadrant Street, which had acted as a dispensary from 1900. There is still a medical centrea at 113 Balaam Street, suggesting the location in the community was a good choice. 

The Wellington

In 1924 the temperance work of the CTWS took a step forward when they acquired a pub, The Wellington at 73 Bidder Street. It was opened by Lady Astor MP and her infant son David, and one newspaper article account described it as

 “converted into what they call " real public-house." contains a large clubroom with a temperance bar and a canteen for the men and women, and a nursery on the first floor for the children.” It is a public-house, with the one- difference that intoxicating drinks will not be sold”

The London Daily Chronicle gave more information

 “The old saloon bar is now a cheerful room, yellow-washed and furnished with brightly painted chairs. “ We have done everything we can to get colour into our public-house,” said Miss Catherine Towers, the warden of the settlement. “‘We want ‘ The Wellington’ to be the most cheerful meeting place in the neighbourhood.” (London Daily Chronicle - 17 December 1924)

 By the 1930s it was still housing the nursery 9-4.30 every day and had become a meeting place for various clubs and perhaps encouraged men to attend as it had darts, football and even baseball listed as “healthy recreation for the men.”

Sadly, none of these buildings have survived today but, in their time, they were valuable contributions to the health and wellbeing of the local women and children of Canning Town and surrounding areas.

The Canning Town Women's Settlement: its workers and the women who wanted to help

Friday 8 March 2024

We have invited historian and local resident, Jane Skelding to share her fascinating research with us on the Canning Town's Women's Settlement, which was very much the precursor of Forest Gate's Durning Hall (see here for history). This will be a three part feature, the first looking at the aims and outputs of the settlement, below; the second will follow in a couple of days on the buildings associated with the organisation. And the third, a couple of days later, on the Settlement's, and indeed one of Newham's, most significant citizens - Rebecca Cheetham - after whom the Stratford Nursery and Children's Centre is named.

So - you can read as the articles are published, or wait a few days and "binge-read" the three together! Jane introduces herself and her interests in the paragraphs following.

Jane Skelding (she/her) is an Aldersbrook resident. She is currently pursuing a PhD, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council in collaboration with the genealogy website FindMyPast. Her research explores language use and marginalised histories in the census. 

As part of her research on working class women in the nineteenth century, she became interested in the Canning Town Women’s Settlement (CTWS) and its work in the community, starting in 1892. CTWS, along with Mansfield House University Settlement, became part of the Aston-Mansfield Charity that continues working with families and young children in Forest Gate today, known to many through Durning Hall. 

To celebrate International Women's Day this blog looks in more detail at the early work of the CTWS and how it impacted women, children and families in the local area.

Many Newham residents will have heard of Rebecca Cheetham, or at least the nursery and children’s centre named after her on Marcus Street in Stratford. She had many important roles in the local community, but it was her job as Warden of the Canning Town Women’s Settlement (CTWS) from 1898-1917 that brought her to West Ham. To mark International Women’s Day this article takes a closer look at the women who worked for the community in the settlement and the women and girls they helped.

What was the Canning Town Women's Settlement?

Canning Town Women’s Settlement was established in 1892. Run as a charity by women and for women, CTWS focussed on helping the working classes and the poorest of Canning Town. Around eight to ten resident workers and some paid staff would run meetings and clubs and train in social work to do casework with the most needy. In the initial scope of its work was a lengthy list of the clubs, agencies and charitable work that is familiar within the world of nineteenth century philanthropy. 

These included work among ‘Factory Girls’; a training home for domestic service; religious social clubs such as Pleasant Sunday Afternoon services (PSA) and Mothers' Meetings; Temperance work and visiting to the sick and poor. CTWS was religious but unsectarian it sought to help without evangelisation, but religion was a constant theme of its work, which was seen as ‘missionary’ work which was just as important as that undertaken abroad. It also trained missionaries for the London Missionary Society to ready them for their work abroad.

As CTWS was a charitable endeavour, all the work was funded by donations and subscriptions. For this reason, Annual Reports were published almost as an advert to appeal for more funds. They contained photographs and detailed accounts of the work that was going on and what still needed to be done by women who worked closely with the local poor. This blog will use the annual reports to take a look at this aspect of life in Canning Town in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.

Who were the Settlement workers?

CTWS was an offshoot of Mansfield House settlement and continued to serve the women and children of the area until 1968 when it became bankrupt and was absorbed in the Mansfield Charities Trust. The settlement movement had started with Toynbee Hall in 1884 and saw a number of establishments spring up in the late nineteenth century where middle-class volunteers, male and female, would live amongst the poor of the cities whilst working with them to try and alleviate the effects of poverty. Settlements were often related to Oxford or Cambridge colleges and usually founded by men, but women’s settlements also became common, CTWS was an example of this.

In general, the women who came to work at the settlement were middle- and upper-class women wanting independence, adventure, and training for a social work career and they came from all over the country. There is mention in the annual reports of funded places for women who may not have had independent means but on the whole they were wealthy.

In the 1890s there were usually ten resident workers volunteering, they would stay for a minimum of two months which often stretched into longer periods with some staying for six years or more. By 1907 the annual report notes that it is harder to get ‘self-supporting’ residents, and as society changed, particularly during the wars, this would become more of a challenge to the traditional way the settlements ran.

Settlement staff (Seventh Annual Report of CTWS, September 1898, p9)

The only ‘local’ girls who lived and worked at the settlement were the domestic staff. The census report from 1901 lists Elizabeth Colvin (22), Frances Rowe (14) and Annie Butcher (14) all living in as domestic servants and were born in West Ham and Shoreditch, the daughters of dock workers and labourers.

Who did they work with?

In the 1890s Canning Town was one of the most deprived areas of East London. Industry and housing built up rapidly between 1880s and the turn of the century, but the late Victorian London philanthropists were slow to catch up with this new area which was deeply affected by the precarious casual labour system of the docks and the poverty that resulted.

The settlement aimed to create a place where the poor women and children could find help with all areas of their lives and try and improve their situation. A sample weekly timetable from 1893 can help illustrate the scale of the work.

Third Annual report of the CTWS, September 1893, p28

Clubs were both a way of offering improving activities for the mind such as bible readings, and physical health with exercise and activity. The idea was to keep the women from the pubs or other less wholesome activities which were seen as a constant danger in areas like Canning Town, especially for the young women working outside the home.

Single women were targeted with the Factory Girls clubs which ran every evening and weekends with often 40 girls in attendance. 

Factory Girls Club (CTWS Third Annual Report 1895, p40)

Another club was the Pleasant Sunday Afternoon (PSA). The PSA movement was important in its provision of a place for the working classes to go on their day off, it was religious and was a compromise for those who would not go to church and might otherwise end up in the pubs. Running in close partnership with Mansfield House as it was for the men too, the Canning Town meetings ran up to 500 attendees on a Sunday afternoon.

Mother’s Meetings and Women’s Co-operative Guild meetings, although different in content, were aimed at married women needing a place to gather for an hour or two away from the responsibilities of children, husband, and household drudgery.

Employment 

A group of MABYS women - dressed ready for job hunting? (CTWS Annual Report 1896 p30)

The Metropolitan Association for Befriending Young Servants (MABYS) had been set up by Henrietta Barnett of Toynbee Hall and looked to place young women into service with reputable households. After they were placed, they were also checked up on and supported by the agency to ensure they were well treated. CTWS prioritised setting up their own branch as the closest had been Poplar.

CTWS also created work rooms for women to work on garments for sale and other employment agencies to help women find work outside the domestic service focussed on by MABYS. Other initiatives included a Sick Benefit society and clothes clubs where women could make over old garments to use or sell on.

Charity and social work

The social work element was in many ways the work that would have drawn the workers to the settlement to gain experience. CTWS soon established branches of the influential Charity Organisation Society (COS) and the Children’s Country Holiday Fund (CCHF). The work involved would have used the visiting and case work approach developed by these agencies under the influence of Octavia Hill and others. 

(Ed:Henrietta Barnett, together with MABYS and the CCHF that she was closely associated with running, were hugely important in the development of the Forest Gate Children's Workhouse, of which Henrietta Barnett was a governor for twenty years - as detailed in Out of Sight, Out of Mind - Abuse, Neglect and Fire in a London Children's Workhouse by John Walker £12.99 from Newham Bookshop and all good book retailers).

The first Warden, Rebecca Cheetham, was very active in the local community. Cheetham was elected as a Poor Law Guardian and later (1903) co-opted onto the School Board. Through her the CTWS became important in West Ham municipal government meaning they could help influence local policy in relation to the poor. 

Health

The CTWS took over the local Medical Mission from September 1893. It had been running for six years already and provided free medical care to the poor. Soon after, they appointed a resident ‘lady doctor’ Miss Margaret Pearse MD, and it rapidly expanded. The Nursing Institution was also important and was established in 1893 by Miss Tillyard and her sister, nurses from the London Hospital (they stayed until 1904). The intention was to provide training for women missionaries working both at home and abroad and offered women’s health, maternity services, and children’s health services to the neighbourhood.

Miss Tillyard (CTWS Third Annual Report 1895, p27)

In addition to the main hospital work outreach work was done among ‘crippled and invalid’ children and convalescent stays were organised at a home at Danbury and Moreton-in-marsh where local women could go to recuperate in clean healthy air.

In 1904 CTWS started to build a hospital which opened in 1905. By 1913 it was reported that the medical mission treated "353 in-patients and [...] 16,165 out-patients during last year" (Westminster Gazette - 17 March 1913). This work continued until the destruction of WW2 meant that the medical mission closed.

CTWS was badly affected by the second world war and its finances never fully recovered. It was absorbed into the Aston Charities Trust in 1968 [see here] and although it is not visible in its buildings, which were all lost to redevelopment, the legacy of the hundreds of women who worked there can still be seen in the health and community services that still exist on the old sites.