Mar 21 2007
Next Seminar: Tuesday 8 May
Rowton and the Poor Man’s Hotel (1885 – 1995): An experiment in Conservative philanthropy
John Mason
Date: Tuesday 8 May 2007, 5.30pm
Venue: CIVITAS 77 Great Peter Street, Westminster, London SW1P 2EZ
Rowton Houses present an unusually clear-cut example of a single idea with no apparent or immediate parallel. The houses were not built by a chocolate or soap magnate but by a former political secretary of relatively limited means, raised to the peerage in unusual circumstances. For this reason, this paper is as much concerned with their creator as with the houses themselves. There is, nonetheless, a link with industrial philanthropy and a wider concern with the common lodging house and the needs of male casual workers.
Rowton’s central notion, though never fully realised, continues to offer the challenge of collective living to an age that has perhaps forgotten what this means. Its adaptation after his death in 1903 continued to provide accommodation for casual workers, but under different circumstances to those he envisaged.
After the paper there will be a brief commentary by Joe McGarry, who has been a resident and is now manager of the last and largest of Rowton’s six hostels, the only one still fulfilling its original purpose.
