TQ3278 : The former Walworth Clinic may find another use, Walworth Road, Walworth, London
taken 9 years ago, near to Bermondsey, Southwark, England
The former Public Health Centre at Southwark was one of a series of pioneering health centres built at the end of the 1930s, in advance of the 1946 National Health Services Act which made their construction a duty of health authorities. Its foundation stone was laid on 11 July 1936 and the building opened on 25 September 1937.
A plaque on the building's facade bears a powerful quotation translated from Cicero: “The health of the people is the highest law”. The new building brought all the borough's health services under one roof, prefiguring the integrated, cradle-to-grave ethos of the 1948 NHS. The sculptural group that crowns the facade is a striking emblem of the centre's focus on mothers and children in what was a deprived part of London in the interwar years.
The design, by the Borough Engineer Percy Smart, is admired for its external massing, jazzy, Deco-style detailing and good quality materials and craftsmanship. The rear part of the building appears now to be a training centre for jobseekers. The building appears in front of Newington Library in Stephen McKay’s long view TQ3278 : Walworth Road, Walworth.
The Walworth Clinic is listed Grade II; English Heritage has a full and interesting history and description at:
Link
This shared description is largely composed of extracts from it.
Original author: Robin Stott, 7 February 2015