The first time oldgreytravel saw the Guildford Spike it was knee deep in files, old office furniture and dust, surrounded by portakabins, abandoned trolleys and all the detritus of a major NHS hospital. The old hospital was closing down and my job was to identify buildings on the site that would be worth keeping as a memory of the past use of the site. I identified a number of handsome Victorian wards and outbuildings that would be beneficial to keep and had the potential to convert to residential use and these stand today as witness to those efforts. However, the significance of the Spike escaped me. Fortunately, those wiser and more knowledgeable than me did and put the building forward for listing as a historic building. It was so designated in 1999, thus keeping the building protected for evermore.
Because, of course, it was not an old storage building, but a rare survival of one of the most distinctive and divisive buildings of our recent past. The Spike, or more correctly the Guildford Vagrants and Casual Ward was built in 1905 to separate the undesirable “vagrants” from the more deserving poor in the main Guildford Union Workhouse. When the Poor Laws ended in 1929, it continued to be used as a night hostel until as recent as the mid 1960’s.
The provision of workhouses was something of an anachronism. They were there to fill the yawning abyss facing the destitute in pre-welfare Britain. As such they were a charitable and well-meaning endeavour but at the same time the powers that be were adamant that such provision must be harsh, uncomfortable and unpleasant. This sits uncomfortably with our modern manners, but it is difficult to imagine what would have happened if such institutions had not existed.
Some of the workhouses required inmates to work for their keep and the Guildford Spike was one such. Often the work was a futile waste of energy expended on tasks that had no meaning and no outcome. At Guildford, inmates were expected to break up rocks into small enough pieces to pass through the grate of their working cells, before they could be fed and bed down for the night. A number of the cells still have the original grilles and these are thought to be the only ones still surviving in the country.
Following listing of the building, the developers and the Council were faced with the seemingly intractable problem of what to do with an early C20 workhouse. Demolition was out of the question, but mothballing was most definitely a possibility. Step forward the local community which, after a hugely successful campaign, persuaded the owners to hand the building over to them as a charitable trust and were subsequently awarded over £1 million by the Heritage Lottery Fund for the restoration and conversion to a community centre and heritage resource.
In a way, I suppose, its original role as a community resource has been reinstated, though its offer is perhaps more benign than that originally planned. The building itself stands proud testimony to a time of hardship and suffering, albeit moderated with a bitter-sweet altruism that seems out of place in our modern welfare state.
The Guildford Spike is available for hire and open regularly for visits and tours. Visit the website guildfordspike.co.uk for further details.
