New flats have gone on the property market in a converted clock-tower building of a former Victorian workhouse in Mile End as part of a mixed development that also includes Britain’s first urban land trust scheme.
The Grade II-listed Clocktower at the old St Clement’s Hospital site in the Mile End Road is a major feature of the block of 38 apartments in a traditional style and structure which went on show at the weekend.
The flats have been fitted out by Linden Homes, one of the partners with East London Community Land Trust and the Peabody Housing Trust which took over the six-acre hospital site when it was released by the Mayor of London six years ago.
The apartments are on private sale, by contrast to homes being offered to families by the land trust at a third the market rate on binding ‘sell back’ contracts which retain the land in perpetuity for future generations.
The land trust scheme followed a decade of campaigning by Citizens UK civic organisation in Whitechapel when St Clement’s Hospital, originally a workhouse when it first opened in 1849, was closed down in 2005.
Boris Johnson drove a bulldozer in 2014 to break ground and start the redevelopment soon after the site was released by City Hall.
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