Billericay: A new twist to the tale...

In one of the unlikeliest of romances, a modern, and very hard-headed building company fell in love with a decrepit Victorian workhouse.

Laing is one of the largest and most successful firms in the construction business. When the company acquired Charles House, in Billericay, there was little sentiment involved.

The listed building was viewed as no more than a promising investment.

"We simply intended to sell it on in due course," says Stuart Wallace, Laing's area manager. "From the building point of view, it wasn't our sort of thing."

Then something rather odd happened. "We became fascinated with the place," says Stuart. "We were almost finding excuses to come and visit the site."

This might seem almost perverse, given the nature of Charles House. For almost a century, it served as the workhouse for Billericay and 26 surrounding parishes.

Workhouses, of course, are a dark presence in British history and myth. For mere buildings, they crop up with remarkable persistence as the chief heavies in books, musicals and films.

Everyone is familiar with the hellish workhouse in Oliver Twist (and Oliver!) - a place of hunger, degradation and institutionalised cruelty. And who can forget the workhouse in Cider with Rosie, where an old couple who had been married for 65 years were separated, and permitted to see each other for a mere hour a week?

Charles House is just one out of hundreds of workhouses constructed all over the British Isles, mostly in the 1840s - the "hungry Forties." Without exception, they were grim works of architecture, apt reflections in bricks and mortar of what went on inside.

Many of them have been demolished, with no tears shed over their remains. Of the survivors, many became the core buildings of NHS hospitals, atoning for their past by serving a new, humane function.

This is how Charles House was saved. It became the main men's block and lab unit for Billericay Hospital. It sat, largely unnoticed, surrounded by modern shack-building, until St Andrews closed in 1997.

During that time, the former workhouse turned from a utilitarian people-processing plant into a historic building.

The bricks acquired the patina of age, lichens colonised the stonework. The huge Welsh slates on the roof, no longer a cheap, everyday item, turned into a symbol of stylish living.

"We've all come round to Victorian architecture in recent years," says Stuart Wallace. "And this was a fine example."

So, against some people's better judgement, Laing took the decision to develop Charles House under the firm's own banner.

The old workhouse has been wholly reconstructed, but using the original materials. The old building has been supplemented by some modern structures, but it is frankly impossible to tell where the Victorian ends and the 1999 begins.

The builders have copied the style of Charles House and used exactly matching - and very expensive - new materials. "We didn't stint anywhere," says Stuart Wallace. "We wanted to do a good job. And, at the end of the day, we do believe that good design is good business."

Laing went to immense efforts to find the correct Mildenhall clay for the bricks. Their architects have also reproduced the distinctive banded-brick decoration which, Stuart Wallace says, "is very much an Essex tradition".

The result is a cosy, rather dreamy courtyard, reminiscent of a cathedral close or an Oxbridge college quad. The neat lawns are edged by box hedging.

"In Victorian times, the garden would have been looked after in this style by some of the fitter old men in the workhouse," says Stuart.

Purchasers are already queuing up for the town-houses that have been carved out of the old building. "They're ideal for people who are trading down - changing their large houses for something smaller, more manageable, but still with some character," Stuart says.

Character they will certainly find. The Charles House interiors as well as the exteriors have been preserved, right down to the mysterious and apparently pointless steps up and down along the corridors, and the odd corners and recesses in the rooms.

"With a project like this, we can't impose our own design," Stuart says. "We have to work within the constraints of the old building. Yet surprisingly, the spaces often seem to be ideal for modern use."

Some might argue that all this represents a prettification of history, a glamorising of what was once a very ugly place, spiritually as well as visually.

Yet there is still at least one person alive who remembers the old Billericay Workhouse days, and has a rather different story to tell.

Miss Mary Needham, 91, was the guest of honour at the reopening ceremony. Having cut the ribbon and declared the new project formally open, she then enjoyed a busy time talking to the media.

"People don't always talk kindly about workhouses," said Mary. "But in many ways, they weren't as black as they've been painted."

She talks with some authority. Mary is the daughter of the last master and matron of Billericay Union Workhouse.

"Those who were able certainly had to work hard for their keep," says Mary. "That included the master and matron. They worked very hard for the welfare of everybody, and they did their very best to create a welcoming atmosphere."

Mary now lives in a cottage on the other side of Norsey Road, opposite the master's residence where she spent her childhood.

"It is good to see the old place being given new life," she says. "It was worth saving. The workhouse certainly isn't a place that Billericay should be ashamed to keep."

Celebrity of the day - Mary Needham

Picture: TOM KING

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