St Mary's Lodge - Stoke Newington
above pics: 1993 and 2003
above pics: 2004
St Mary's Lodge dates from around 1843 and is the last remaining of several equally-grand homes
in Lordship Park.
St Mary's Lodge was designed and constructed by the architect/surveyor John Young for himself and
his wife, their 9 children, and two servants. A prominent architect of the day - whose work includes the
1860's Cancer Hospital in the Fulham Road (the present-day Royal Marsden Hospital) and Laughton
Lodge ), the Sussex mansion of the 1848 Lord Mayor of London Sir James Duke - Young was to serve
as District Surveyor of the city's Eastern Division for 25 years.
As would be expected for a house designed by a leading architect for his own use, St Mary's Lodge was
endowed with stylistic touches that were to become mainstays of the John Young & Son "look".
The arched windows and terracotta brickwork accents seen in Young's later commercial work (no. 23
Eastcheap and no. 12 Little Britain, both in the City of London) are two examples of features that the
architect had incorporated some 17 years earlier into the design of his Lordship Road home.
The Youngs lived in St Mary's Lodge until John Young Sr's death in 1877.
recent Interior pics of hallway & stairwell
In 1878 William James Crabb - the owner of a corn merchants at 210 Kingsland Road - moved into the
house with his wife, their children Lavinia, Arthur and Hugh, and two servants. Just six years later,
however - and leaving children of 16, 14 and 7 years old - William Crabb would die at the age of 46.
Lavinia died 5 years later aged 51. Both are buried in Stoke Newington's Abney Park Cemetery.
Despite lasting only 10 years or so, the Crabb family's involvement with St Mary's Lodge does add
an interesting footnote to the house's story:
It's not known who raised the young Hugh Crabb following his parents' deaths in the 1880's, what
became of the family business, or whether there was any significant inheritance passed on to the
children. What is known, however, is that when Hugh eventually married Beatrice Goodall in 1906,
his given occupation was "traveller". And when in 1909 Beatrice gave birth to the couple's only child
- a son - the young family were quite poor. Hugh was eventually listed as missing or killed in action
in WW I. Following Hugh's death, the couple's son was brought up a relative on Beatrice's side of
the family. After an unhappy period atBrighton College, young Lionel transferred to the HMS Conway
naval training facility and enlisted in the Navy. His subsequent career was to include - and to culminate
in - events that have become both WW II and Cold War folklore.As a scuba diver in WW II, Commander
Lionel "Buster" Crabb won the George Cross for outstanding courage. The 1956 film "Silent Enemy",
starring Laurence Harvey, is the story of Crabb's WW II exploits. Then, in 1957 at the height of the Cold
War, Crabb's name once again hit the headlines when his headless and handless body was found washed
up on the coast near Portsmouth. Crabb's final mission had been to secretly inspect the hull of the new
Russian warship that had brought Nikita Kruschev to the UK on a goodwill visit. Apparently, the
Russians didn't appreciate the Commander's 'special attention'. The affair was one of the biggest
news stories of the year.
From the early 1960's, the local authority used St Mary's Lodge as a women's hostel. Records show the
house to have been occupied by up to 9 unrelated women at a time. The hostel was closed in the mid
1990's, and the building and grounds were left unmaintained and unsecured. Vandals, squatters and
the elements have left the house and grounds derelict.
recent interiors pics of first floor
In February 2002 the property was sold to the trustees of the TorahEtz Chaim Synagogue (located next to St Mary's Lodge) for a knock-down price.
Since taking possession of St Mary's Lodge, the security fencing (erected by the Borough long before the sale) had not been maintained.This has caused the building itself to be further vandalised (the police and fire departments logged a combined total of 27 callouts to the house between Sept 2002 and Sept 2003),
A cynical person might almost assume that the plan was to let the building decay until it became so dangerous that it had to be demolished...
A demolition company recently erected a hoarding around the property. Rumours originating from Torah Etz Chaim members suggest that the building of new flats is planned, thought Hackney Planning says her department has not received any planning application or request for change-of-use. The council have now posted notices on the hoardings warning that the Council will take appropriate legal action to prevent any such demolition.
The above history is a summary of information taken from a website dedicated to St Mary's Lodge
The information and photographs (excluding those labeled 2004 which belong to Derelict London) are reproduced by kind permission of the above website.
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