Last surviving disinfecting station in England at risk, charity says

The Grade II listed former disinfecting station in Clapton, Hackney was built in 1901 and designed by architects Gordon and Gunton. Credit: CAV Aerial / free for use by LDRS partners

A public health building in Hackney is one of the most endangered listed sites in the country, a conservation charity has said.

Hackney’s Grade II listed municipal disinfecting station, thought to be the last one surviving in England, has claimed the top spot on the Victorian Society’s annual round-up of buildings at risk from decay or neglect, prompting calls for the “exceptionally rare” building to be put to new use.

Commissioned in 1899 when diseases such as smallpox, scarlet fever and measles were rife, the civic infrastructure at Millfields Road in Clapton was designed to support the council as it disinfected residents’ contaminated clothing and other belongings at scale. That year, 115 children died from measles in Hackney alone.

The station closed in 1984, at a time when the majority of Victorian buildings were being demolished, and placed on Historic England’s Heritage at Risk register in 1995. But the society says its firm walls and stable foundation make it easier to adapt for the modern day compared to other listed structures.

Speaking to the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS), Morgan Ellis Leah, southern conservation adviser for the Victorian Society said: “There’s real deprivation of community space at the moment and it’s a perfectly good building that can be put to public use.”

The charity added that the building was a testament to when public health investment was “ambitious and architecturally expressive” and that the only viable option for its future was for “sensitive” sale and reuse.

A birds-eye view of the Millfields Road depot. Credit: CAV Aerial / free for use by LDRS partners

James Hughes, director of the Victorian Society, said the building told “a powerful story about how society responded to crisis, and how civic ambition shaped the built environment”.

A spokesperson for Hackney Council said budget constraints made it difficult for the local authority to carry out “costly” restorations of heritage buildings, but added that it continued to maintain the Millfields Road depot and was “looking at options for self-sustaining uses”.

The spokesperson highlighted the council’s recent refurbishments to buildings such as Abney Park Chapel and The Portico in Clapton which have successfully seen them removed from the Heritage at Risk register.

In 2024, the art deco Stoke Newington Town Hall was added to the register due to decay, collapsing roofs and leaks amid longstanding concerns over it needing repairs.

The disinfecting station joins a varied group of Victorian and Edwardian buildings deemed at risk on the society’s top 10 endangered buildings this year, including a former railway station in Cumbria, an “iconic” transporter bridge in Middlesbrough and a neo-Gothic art school.