45 Squared 19) MARWOOD SQUARE, N10
Borough of Haringey, 120m×90m
I'm trying to visit a Square in each of London's boroughs during the course of this year-long project, and by coming to Haringey I'm now halfway through the list. Today's Square lies just north of Highgate Wood on the edge of Muswell Hill, immediately opposite what used to be Cranley Gardens station. It's a relatively new square with old bits, and occupies the final site of a former hospital that started out in Moorfields. And just to confuse things the housing development is called Woodside Square but the road that threads through it (and thus everyone's address) is Marwood Square instead.
St Luke's Hospital for Lunatics was founded in 1751 and was London's second asylum for the mentally ill, targeting patients who might be curable rather than locked away for ever. Its main premises were on Old Street, roughly where Aldi and Argos are today, but were sold off to the Bank of England in 1916 who used it for the printing of banknotes. In the 1920s the hospital's governors bought up land on Woodside Avenue for the construction of a 50-bed facility for treating mental disorders called the Woodside Nerve Hospital, later St Luke's Woodside Hospital for Functional Nervous Disorders. Three existing Edwardian mansion blocks were repurposed for staff use and are still present on site. But everything else was demolished after the hospital closed in 2010 and the site then sold to a housing developer who replaced it with a loop of upmarket townhouses, which'd be Marwood Square.
It's a private development so wandering in is discouraged, and if you're driving it's strictly clockwise only. But follow the tiled road past the heritage frontage and you find yourself in a very modern estate comprising densely-packed blocks of flats and townhouses. They have a very contemporary aesthetic, all redbrick and timber with just enough irregularity to soften the overall vibe. The townhouses are particularly substantial, assuming you don't want a decent sized garden or indeed anything more out front than a scrap of shrubbery. They came Highly Commended in the Development of the Year (More Than 100 Homes) category of the Sunday Times British Homes Awards in 2018, thus as you can guess they don't come cheap. And therein lies the sadder and greedier side of this story.
When certain older Haringey residents found out that the hospital site was to be redeveloped they decided to work together with the planning process to promote the concept of co-housing. This is where the elderly choose to live in close proximity rather than move into a retirement home, supporting each other and sharing key facilities like laundry, thereby keeping costs down. It's been done successfully elsewhere in London and the hope was to follow that example and integrate co-housing into one corner of Woodside Square. Dozens of people expressed an interest, even setting up their own blog to explain the potential benefits and encourage others.
They succeeded in getting a communal 'Common House' incorporated into the design with space for meetings and food preparation, also the provision of tiny allotment strips in raised beds. They debated how best to set up a car share scheme and strongly supported the developers with their planning application. But when it was finally revealed how much each flat would cost they got a shock - it was a third more than expected - and most of the group realised they could never afford the flat and the service charge.
So was utopia dashed. A wealthier group of over 55s moved in and the Common House became a hireable meeting space rather than a daily focus. At present it's yoga on Tuesdays, gardening on Wednesdays, bridge on Thursdays and art on Fridays, plus a library that only opens once a month. Meanwhile at the other end of the development one of the 4-bed townhouses is currently on the market for over £2m, which to be fair is also the going rate for one of the Edwardian terraces on the avenue round the back. It does feel wrong that a prime development site on former NHS land has ended up this way, but that's 2013 land sales for you.
Reassuringly the former care home across the street is currently being redeveloped into '32 council homes and 9 private sale homes' as Haringey council now have a better grip on housing tenure hereabouts. But Woodside Square stands as testament to profit-focused acquisition, most definitely somewhere nice to live but a dream snuffed out all the same.
