Left: The outside of the building; Top right: disused offices; bottom right: the old laundry
Left: space for more flats in the courtyard; Top right: a former flat; bottom right: the engine bay would make a nice bar or restaurant in trendy Clerkenwell
Published: 9 May, 2014
by ANDREW JOHNSON
FOR sale: Seven-storey building, in prime central London location, complete with original fixtures and fittings and underground car park. Would make a nice hotel.
Clerkenwell Fire Station was opened by property consultants Dron and Wright, which is handling its sale, for potential buyers to look around on Tuesday.
The Tribune popped along for a look and discovered that huge parts of the building have not been used for years – and could have been sold separately if a Fire Brigades Union proposal had not been dismissed.
The four upper floors of the station in Rosebery Avenue, Clerkenwell, are a warren of corridors and purpose-built residential rooms, many with fireplaces which in themselves would collect a tidy sum at salvage shops.
The station was closed in January following a drawn-out battle with Mayor of London Boris Johnson. An FBU rep said that the top four floors hadn’t been used. Three of those floors are converted offices, but the top floor’s ripped and dirty wallpaper show that its rooms were once residential.
Children’s wallpaper in what was evidently a nursery can be traced back to the 1960s and there is also a huge antiquated laundry. The rooms have been shut off for at least 40 years.
“It would make a great hotel,” the union rep said. “We did suggest years ago that the top four floors be sold for development.
“That would have generated enough money to fund all of Islington’s fire stations. But it wasn’t followed up on. It also has an underground car park for about 20 cars, which the firefighters didn’t use. It would make a nice hotel.”
Clerkenwell, built between 1912 and 1917, was one of 10 fire stations closed by London Fire Brigade to save £28m in January.
The closures only went ahead after a legal challenge by Islington Council and a campaign of opposition from the FBU, which argued lives would be put in danger. Islington South Labour MP Emily Thornberry also opposed the closures.
The Grade II-listed building, along with the other stations, will be auctioned in a closed bidding process in June – there is no guide price and all bids will be ‘blind’ and made by email. It is likely the building will sell for several million pounds.
In its appraisal of the site planning consultants Maddox and Associates says: “The station ranks among some of the best examples of a remarkable group of fire stations built between 1900-14.”
‘Scandal’ of flats above Clerkenwell fire station left empty for 40 years (Click here)