St Luke’s Workhouse

My mum wanted to know about see photo 3 & 4 as she has passed it on many occasions so I looked into it and this is what I found.

The first map dates from 1893-1896 and shows St Luke’s Workhouse. The second map dates from 1940-1960 and shows St Matthews Hospital.
This site in both maps is taken from Shepherdess walk and City Road London EC1.
Photo 3 & 4: The old wall shows remains of infirm wards and administrative offices St Luke’sWorkhouse at the end of Shepherdess walk
Photo 5: Railings and pillars at the end of Shepherdess walk St Luke’s Workhouse
Photo 6: The old hospital gates City Road now entrance to car park still bear the initials SM
Photo 7: St Luke’s Workhouse new infirm wards and administrative offices from the east dated 1879

In 1782 St Luke's parish workhouse was built at the junction of City Road and Shepherdess Walk in Islington.  The previous St Luke’s workhouse was located on Featherstone street this building remained and was then in use as a hospital.

In 1870 St Luke’s workhouse in Shepherdess walk was adapted for new female wards which were added on the north of the 2 acre site in 1871, by which time it could accommodate 930 patients.  In 1876 a south block was added. In a further redevelopment in 1877-9, infirm wards and administrative offices were erected along Shepherdess Walk at the east of the site which continued to be known as St Luke's workhouse.

In 1916 it became known as the Holborn and Finsbury Institution.

In 1930 its administration was taken over by the LCC and it was renamed the City Road Institution.  In 1936 it was renamed St Matthew's Hospital and cared for geriatric cases.  In October 1937 it became a 627-bed general hospital for the sick, with its association with poor-law patients then ending.

During WW2 a quarter of the ward accommodation was destroyed by a high explosive bomb in 1940. Fifty male patients, 33 female patients and 3 nurses were killed. It was one of the worst incidents of bomb damage involving a hospital during the war.

The Hospital was evacuated and remained vacant for the next two years. The wards reopened in 1942, but closed again shortly afterwards. By 1945 it had returned to normal, but with only 320 patients in eight wards.

In 1948, the hospital joined the new National Health Service as one of the Central Group of Hospitals of the North East Metropolitan Regional Hospital Board. In February 1952, visitors from the King Edward's Hospital Fund for London described Saint Matthew's as "a dump for the chronic sick, the buildings being no less antiquated than those of Saint Leonard's or Bethnal Green, patients still being accommodated in great 40-bedded wards".

From 1948 to 1954, great efforts were made to improve conditions at the hospital, but in 1960 it was reported that the progress had not been maintained.
Saint Matthew's was by then a 320-bed hospital for the care of geriatric and chronic sick patients. The south west block was still standing empty and the war damage only partially repaired. The hospital finally closed in 1986.

The main surviving workhouse building is the northern part of the 1871 ward block which has now been converted to flats. But on the southern entrance to the site on City Road still has gates bearing the initials "SM" — St Matthews.

St Luke’s Workhouse ties in with my genealogy as unfortunately several ancestors where in here at one time.