Building record 0581702000 - GATES TO TINDAL CENTRE, BIERTON HILL

Entrance gate lodges listed Grade II. Former workhouse gate lodges of 1844 by S.O. Foden in association with H.W. Parker. MATERIALS: Red brick with yellow brick detailing, slate roofs. EXTERIOR: A pair of single-storey lodges, one to either side of the narrow main gateway to the workhouse. Like the main building these are of red brick with yellow brick quoins and have double-pitched slate roofs. They comprise two parts: a higher northern section, and a lower one to the south. The northern sections have two gable stacks, and a smaller stack pierces the roofs of the southern section. The two buildings are not quite identical, and that to the west has a wide gabled bay to the west. Some of the windows have iron grilles which appear to be the original lattice frame. In 1862 these were said to house the porter's lodge (the easterly building) and the board room, while on the 1878 map at a scale of 10" to the mile the former is annotated 'Paupers' Hall'. INTERIOR: As mapped in 1878, the board room had a single room in the northern section, whereas the Paupers' Hall was unevenly subdivided into two. The southern sections of both buildings were subdivided. Both lodges are now fitted out as modern offices. SUBSIDIARY FEATURES: The gap between the lodges is closed by iron entrance gates set between red and yellow brick piers with an overthrow and lantern above; all are apparently original. To either side are short, curved, sections of iron railings, abutting piers of the same character as those supporting the main gate and short sections of flanking walls again truncated with piers. Railings, piers and flanking walls are likely to be contemporary with the lodges. HISTORY: Aylesbury Union Workhouse opened in 1844, replacing an earlier facility. It was part of a national network of structured social provision built following the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834. Designed by Strethill Oakes Foden (also responsible for workhouses in Bromley, Cuckfield, Rye, and Highworth & Swindon) in association with Assistant Poor Law Commissioner, Henry Walter Parker, barrister, it was located on Bierton Hill and stood within extensive gardens. It is believed that Parker used his influence to ensure the building did not look like a prison, presumably to set it apart from the prison which in the event opened across the road in 1845 - that juxtapositioning presumably reflecting an alternative view of the worth of the poor and the criminal sections of society. Although the Workhouse was intended to house 300 inmates only 117 were present in 1883 and 91 in 1893. Later the workhouse became a hospital, and is now a mental health unit. SOURCES: K. Morrison, The Workhouse: A Study of Poor-Law Buildings in England (1999) pp. 85-92; J.J. Sheahan, History and Topography of Buckinghamshire (1862), 76; Ordnance Survey 10" to the mile survey of Aylesbury (1878); R.C.H.M. report on Tindal Centre (formerly Aylesbury Union Workhouse) (1992), copy at National Monuments Record Centre, Swindon, index file BF 100290. SUMMARY OF IMPORTANCE: The 1844 gate lodges to Aylesbury's workhouse, like it designed in a deliberately domestic Elizabethan style by S.O. Foden in association with Assistant Poor Law Commissioner H. W. Parker, formed a deliberated architectural contrast with the contemporary prison opposite, the forbidding gateway of which is already listed. They and the associated gateposts, iron gates overthrow and side railings survive little-altered, and have special interest for their early date, design and degree of survival (B8).