Russell Chamberlin

Saving the spike

Saving the spike

issue 04 February 2006

It seemed a curious place for one of the grimmest of Victorian institutions, tucked under manicured downs, surrounded by handsome villas with flowering gardens and cosy cottages. But when the Guildford Union Workhouse was built in 1905, it was positioned on the edge of the town in order not to offend the susceptibilities of the townsfolk. After the abolition of workhouses it was turned into a hospital, and then, in the 1980s, the site was used for an upmarket residential estate.

Curiously, the ‘spike’ or casual ward for vagrants survived and received Grade II listing in 1999. Spikes figure largely in the books of George Orwell and Jack London, who were among many middle-class writers who voluntarily underwent the experience of total destitution. There is a hierarchy even in hell and the spike was always physically separate from the workhouse.

I was taken round the Guildford spike by its last porter.

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