From Board of Works to Book House
One Hundred Years

THE handsome building called Book House standing high on East Hill is just a hundred years old in August 1988. Its almost unaltered exterior hides a number of changes within, but since no early interior views or plans survive, its history can only be told through its occupants. On several occasions it has been abandoned and could have suffered demolition, but each time it has proved to be remarkably adaptable and now flourishes as the home of the Book Trust.

It was originally built in 1888 as the offices of the Wandsworth District Board of Works when the elevation of Battersea, one of its constituent parishes, to the status of independent Vestry compelled the Board to vacate its offices on Battersea Rise in that parish and find new ones within its own boundaries.¹

The District Board had been formed in 1855 as a result of the reorganisation of London local government under the Metropolis Local Management Act.² Until that time London was governed by an enormous number of local bodies, mainly parishes whose incumbents, church-wardens and vestrymen had taken on many non-ecclesiastical functions over the centuries. The relief of the poor had been reorganised in 1834, but now the fabric of London was growing too fast to be managed by the parishes and their various parochial highway boards, paving commissioners and burial boards. The 1855 Act set up the Metropolitan Board of Works to control main highways, drainage and sewers, together with two kinds of second tier authorities to control local aspects of these works. The twenty-three larger parishes of London, such as Lambeth, became Civil Vestries; the fifty-five smaller parishes were grouped into fourteen District Boards; Wandsworth was one of these, comprising the parishes of Wandsworth, Clapham, Battersea, Streatham, Putney and Tooting Graveney. The members of the District Board were elected by the Vestrymen of the constituent parishes in numbers relative to the population of each parish.³

Vestries and boards were required to set up suitable offices; Lambeth already had a new Vestry Hall, built two years before by the previous unreformed vestry, but Wandsworth was a different case being a combination of six parishes. It put off a decision by holding its weekly board meetings in the Wandsworth & Clapham Union Workhouse, then leased Bolingbroke House by Wandsworth Common, and only in 1858 did it take a lease of offices on what it called “a more central situation” in Battersea Rise.⁴ This building still exists as the Church of the Nazarene.⁵

Fig. 1. The parishes of the Wandsworth District Board of Works (1887) — map, not reproduced here.⁹

Here for nearly thirty years the Board administered the paving, lighting and cleaning of the streets, the removal of rubbish, and the making of new sewers, compelling householders to connect their dwellings with them; it also controlled the sanitary amenities of new houses. Inspectors of Nuisances were appointed, with a Medical Officer to act as the professional authority on public health.⁶ Wandsworth District remained very strongly parochial, for although at first it set up committees for finance, highways, sewers etc., only a year after the Act it had already formed local committees for each parish which acted like little vestries and became more influential than the specialist committees.⁷

The 1855 Act had allowed for parishes which reached a sufficiently large population to opt out of the District Board system and set up as Vestries in their own right. Battersea was now in this position, and with the support of the Board had obtained an enabling Act of Parliament. As the Board’s offices were within the area of the new Vestry and would be taken over, provision was made in the Act for compensation of £2,176 for the lease of the building and the furniture. Since the Act received the Royal Assent on 12th July 1887 and the Board had to move out by 25th March 1888, it had to move fast to find new accommodation, but nevertheless determined to commission a new building for itself, following the example of Wandsworth Vestry’s new Town Hall of 1882 in the High Street.

It looked at several sites, and chose a piece of ground measuring 1,040 square yards on East Hill at the fork of the highways to Battersea and Clapham. This was formerly a piece of waste of the manor of Wandsworth, part of which had been a pond which had been filled in between 1848 and 1854, in which latter year Mr Du Buisson gave notice that he would enclose the land. It was conveyed to him by Lord Spencer, the Lord of the Manor, for £30. The freehold of the land was purchased by the Board of Works in 1887 for £800, the committee being of the opinion that with regard to the commanding site the price paid for the land was “exceedingly low”.

East Hill had been one of the most favoured sites in Wandsworth in the 17th and 18th centuries when wealthy merchants in the City built country houses there. Some of the Protestant refugees from the Low Countries and France like Peter Paggen and Peter de la Porte made their homes there. The number of these buried in the new parish burial ground on East Hill of 1687 led to the belief that it was just a Huguenot cemetery.⁸ By 1887 however the area had changed. Terraces of small houses now covered the grounds of the villas and the market gardens of Bridge Field.

From six designs submitted, the architect chosen was William Newton Dunn, who had a practice at 1–2 Bucklersbury in the City. He was the eldest son of a clergyman in Tenby,¹⁰ and became an ARIBA in 1882 and was elected FRIBA in 1906. He designed 130 New Bond Street and made improvements to numbers 165–168 (Aspreys), but his other work noted in his obituary was mainly laying out new roads and houses in Streatham, Clapham and Thornton Heath. He also designed the lodges and chapels of Streatham Cemetery,¹¹ but although his work in enlarging St. Mary’s Church Balham is mentioned in the obituary, it omits the Wandsworth Board of Works building which must surely have been one of his most important and successful achievements in public building. Dunn would have been helped in his task of designing the new offices by H. G. Hills, the Clerk to the Board, who had considerable experience of Wandsworth’s needs as Assistant Clerk since 1875 and as Clerk for the last two years.¹²

The Board required a meeting room for its members; it also wanted offices for its staff which was decreased by only three, from 48 to 45. This reflected the needs of the increasing population of the remaining parishes, and the wider responsibilities of the Board in matters of housing and public health added by legislation since 1855. The staff unchanged were the Clerk to the Board, a solicitor, the Inspector of Adulterated Food, and the Analyst. The posts of messenger and a resident female housekeeper were now combined in a resident messenger and office keeper, and at the bottom of the list was added an office boy. The main body of staff was as follows (with the former staff shown for comparison):

Not all of these would be tied to desks. Surveyors’ work would take them out into the parishes for much of their time, but those in the office would require space for drawing and examining plans.

Tenders were invited from builders: the lowest, from C. Kynoch & Co. of Clapham was accepted, and the contract sealed on 20th October 1887. The work was completed satisfactorily in the time specified and the Board took possession in August 1888. The total cost was £9,532 13s 7d, very close indeed to their estimate of £9,500! As the Battersea offices had had to be vacated on 25th March, in the intervening months Prospect House, East Hill was rented at a cost of £50, but as no room in it was large enough for board meetings, these were held in the Town Hall by arrangement with Wandsworth Vestry.

The abolition of the Metropolitan Board of Works and its replacement by the London County Council in 1889¹³ did not affect the work of the Districts and Vestries radically. The major change came with the creation of the Metropolitan Boroughs in 1900 by the London Government Act of 1899,¹⁴ when all vestries and boards were abolished. The new Metropolitan Borough of Wandsworth assumed the responsibilities of the District Board of Works, of the Vestries of the parishes of Wandsworth, Clapham, Putney, Streatham and Tooting Graveney and also other statutory bodies in those parishes, such as public library commissions and burial boards.

The Borough took over all their buildings and premises — refuse depots, libraries, burial grounds, storehouses etc, and of course the two main administrative offices in Wandsworth: the Town Hall in the High Street became the Town Hall of the new borough, while the District Board’s offices were re-named Council House and used as municipal offices.¹⁵

Fig. 2. The building, here seen in c. 1912, was known successively as 45 East Hill (1888), Council House (1899), County House (1937) and Book House (1980). Photo caption: “Town Hall & Tram Terminus, Clapham Junction.” — photo not reproduced here.

In the twentieth century the scale of local government expanded and in 1927 a new building was erected on the site of the Town Hall, incorporating part of the old building. This was still not enough but it was 1937 before the new municipal buildings flanking Fairfield Street were officially opened.

Council House, at the postal address of 45 East Hill, now redundant as a local authority building was sold by the Borough in 1937 to the County of London Electric Supply Co. Ltd.,¹⁶ who re-named it County House — a name it kept until it became Book House.¹⁷

Before nationalisation in 1948, electricity for lighting and power was supplied either by private companies or by local authorities. The County of London Co. was to become one of the largest and most important of the companies, but it had began operations rather late. When it was founded in 1891 all the valuable sites in central London and the City were already secured by earlier companies. It eventually operated in two main areas, one in Essex from Barking to Romford, Epping and Saffron Walden, the other in south-west London including Wandsworth, Balham, Streatham and Tooting Bec, and further south to Croydon and Wallington (the new borough of Battersea however had set up its own electricity supply company). By 1895 it was supplying from two generating stations: one at the City Road Basin of the Regent’s Canal for East London; the other was on the Causeway of the Wandle River.¹⁸ The Wandsworth station had six Babcock & Wilson boilers and six Raworth “Universal” engines, all driving 150 kw Mordey alternators.¹⁹ By 1915 the company’s supply of power was showing greater returns than did the supply of lighting.²⁰

In the early days of electricity supply, domestic consumers rented rather than purchased equipment such as cooking stoves and heaters. The company had showrooms in most of its suburban areas, including one in Wandsworth High Street next to the Baths. The County of London Co. was particularly vigorous in advocating centralisation of facilities, and formed large groups through share transfers: for example the South London Electricity Supply Corporation had become part of the group, as early as 1919.²¹ The administrative headquarters were in New Broad Street in offices called County House. When the Council House, East Hill came up for sale the company took the opportunity to relieve the pressure on headquarters: the purchase was completed on 28th May 1937 for £13,000²² and the building, newly named County House, became the area office for South London.²³

Under the Electricity Supply Act of 1926, the Central Electricity Board was set up as a public body to co-ordinate wholesale supply to distribution authorities: this was the beginning of the national grid system. The war in 1939 prevented any further full scale reorganisation, but as part of the Labour Government’s post-war programme all branches of electricity supply were nationalised. The country was divided into areas under electricity boards of which the London Electricity Board was one.²⁴ County House in New Broad Street became the headquarters; County House, East Hill became the offices of the sub-area of South-West London. In 1953, however, this sub-area was moved to Electric House, Lavender Hill — once the headquarters of Battersea borough’s electricity supply.²⁵

County House was again vacant, and now entered a period of decline, when it could have been in danger of demolition like so many of Wandsworth’s older buildings. It was occupied for some years from the late 1950s as the offices of two finance companies — The Stores Trust Ltd, and Firth Cleveland Finance Ltd. The first of these remained at least until 1976.²⁶

The building is enjoying happier times with its present occupant, Book Trust. This began as the National Book League in 1925. The aims of the Trust are “1. To promote the role of books in the enrichment of life. 2. To make books and reading more accessible to people of all ages, races and cultures. 3. To protect and further the interest of readers.”²⁷ It was formerly at 7 Albemarle Street, Mayfair, and those of us who were members when it was there, particularly in the post-war years, remember it more as a delightful London club; plenty of books, splendid catering under Tommy Layton, with exhibitions and publications (especially bibliographies) as its main contribution to furthering the aim of promoting the value of books.

However, as Martyn Goff, the recently retired Chief Executive, said “it boasted a beautiful house in the middle of Mayfair which camouflaged its near bankruptcy.” The inevitable move to a less expensive part of London came in 1980. County House, which had been empty for a few years, was purchased through the Unwin Charitable Trust²⁸ for £250,000,²⁹ and gave its present name, Book House. Book Trust (the name was changed from National Book League in 1986) continues to work for the book in new ways. The Children’s Book Foundation is one of its departments, and the well-known Booker Prize is one of fourteen prizes administered by Book Trust.

One event, somewhat atypical, in the autumn of 1981, shortly after the move, was Wandsworth Society’s local exhibition “The prospect of Wandsworth” to celebrate its 10th anniversary.³⁰

In the Board Room on the first floor overlooking the ‘Huguenot’ cemetery the District Board had tried to improve the lives of the people of Wandsworth by the unglamourous means of drains and street sweepers. Now Book Trust, in a Victorian building standing like a lighthouse in a sea of traffic, hopes to enrich peoples’ lives world-wide through books and reading.

Long may it continue!