Time Walk
A Street Built for Discipline
A court, a prison, a fire brigade and a workhouse once stood within a few hundred yards of each other here. Today a walker passes a converted fire station, a Buddhist centre in the old court-house, and a hospital site holding a small museum among its newer buildings. The Court Tavern still stands on its corner, the last of the terraced houses that once lined the street.
Beneath the current mix of flats, clinics and community offices lies a 19th-century machinery of care and control — workhouse, infirmary and police station all built within a generation of each other. That layering of institutions is the street's real story, and it starts with how the ground itself came to be built on.
Name Origin
An Unexplained Name on a Victorian Grid
The sources used here do not explain where the name Renfrew comes from. What they do establish is when and how the street itself was formed. Kennington Lane, just to the south, was a medieval country lane linking the Manor of Kennington to the village of Newington at Elephant and Castle, and by the early 19th century it was lined with Georgian terraces. Renfrew Road and the streets around it were laid out afterwards, in the middle of the 19th century, as a grid of terraced housing on land not previously developed.
History
Court, Cells, Fire and the Workhouse
Civic Lambeth concentrated itself here within a decade. A large police station, a court-house with prison cells, a fire station and a workhouse all went up on or around Renfrew Road between 1868 and 1871, with an infirmary following soon after. The fire station was extended in 1896. The workhouse, built in 1871 for the Lambeth Board of Guardians, represented the latest thinking of its day on housing the destitute, with strict segregation by sex, age and character type.
Lambeth Infirmary opened in 1876 on the site next door, its main entrance on Brook Drive. By 1922 the Workhouse and Infirmary had been combined into one hospital offering a lying-in ward, antenatal clinic, venereal disease wards, an ophthalmic surgeon, a pathology laboratory and radium and deep X-ray apparatus. The regime eased when the London County Council took the buildings over in 1930, and the NHS took possession in 1948; the site became Lambeth Hospital in the 1920s. The Master's House survived, along with two gate lodges and the receiving wards built against the boundary wall.
Wartime bombing and post-war slum clearance cleared the area to the east and south in the 1960s, which was redeveloped as the Cotton Gardens Estate. Of the original terraced houses on Renfrew Road itself, only the Court Tavern remained by 2007. Kennington Lane Police Station, which fell within L (Lambeth) Division, had reopened at 47 Kennington Road on the corner with Renfrew Road in 1871, complete with second-floor flats for a married sergeant's family, before closing in a 1932 reorganisation.
People
A Workhouse Childhood
Charlie Chaplin is thought to have been an inmate of the Workhouse as a child, together with his mother. The record is treated as probable rather than certain, but it ties one of the 20th century's most famous performers directly to the institutional buildings that still stand on Renfrew Road.
A plain red K2 telephone kiosk standing outside the former court-house (now the Jam Yang Buddhist Centre) on Renfrew Road is Grade II listed, alongside the building behind it.
Recent Times
From Relief to Reuse
In November 1984 the London History Workshop Centre, commissioned by the St Thomas' Special Trustees, proposed converting the redundant Workhouse buildings into a Health Care History Centre. The plan would have based the centre's work on the Black Report's aims for health education, combining the history of health with self-help activities and a forum for current health issues.
Renfrew Road Conservation Area was designated in 1985, recognising a unique assemblage of 19th-century civic and institutional buildings in the north of Lambeth. By 2007, the former court-house was in community use, the fire station had been converted into apartments, the Court Tavern stood vacant, and the old hospital site held a mix of small occupants including residential and healthcare uses and a museum.
Today
Institutions Repurposed
The buildings still carry their Victorian purpose in their bones. The former fire station at No. 46 and the former court-house, now the Jam Yang Buddhist Centre, are both Grade II listed. Lambeth Magistrates Court, built with the other Renfrew Road buildings between 1860 and 1890, remains a high-security building. Brick gate piers and lodges from the old Lambeth Hospital site still frame the entrance from Dugard Way.
On the Map
Renfrew Road Then & Now
Frequently Asked Questions
Why is it called Renfrew Road?
The sources used here do not explain the origin of the name. What is documented is that the street was laid out in the mid-19th century as part of a new grid of terraced housing behind Kennington Lane.
What is Renfrew Road known for?
A cluster of Victorian civic buildings — a court-house, fire station, police station and workhouse — built within a few years of each other in the late 1860s and 1870s, several of which survive in new uses today.
Is it true Charlie Chaplin stayed on Renfrew Road?
He is thought, as a child, to have been an inmate of the Renfrew Road Workhouse along with his mother, though this is recorded as probable rather than certain.
What happened to the old workhouse?
It became part of Lambeth Hospital, was taken over by the London County Council in 1930 and by the NHS in 1948; parts of it, including the Master's House, survive on the former hospital site.
Is the Court Tavern still open?
As of the 2007 Conservation Area Statement it stood vacant, though the building — the last surviving terrace property on Renfrew Road — was still standing.