Spa Green Estate

Spa Green Estate between Rosebery Avenue and St John St in Clerkenwell, London EC1, England, is the most complete post-war realisation of a 1930s radical plan for social regeneration through Modernist architecture. Conceived as public housing, it is now a mixed community of private owners and council tenants, run by a resident-elected management organization. In 1998 this work by the architect Berthold Lubetkin received a Grade II* listing (the grade higher than II) for its architectural significance, and the major 2008 restoration brought back the original colour scheme, which recalls Lubetkin’s contacts with Russian Constructivism.

Medical and political leaders in the then Metropolitan Borough of Finsbury worked with the equally radical Lubetkin and his practice Tecton (which by the time of Spa Green's completion in 1949 had regrouped as Skinner, Bailey & Lubetkin). The nearby Finsbury Health Centre (1938) emblematized the future welfare state and featured in a wartime poster by Abram Games, Your Britain: Fight For it Now. In Spa Green, first designed in 1938 and developed in 1943, Tecton aimed to fulfill this utopian promise.

The Minister of Health Aneurin Bevan laid the foundation stone in July 1946, and the opening ceremonies in 1949 (witnessed by some residents who still live in Spa Green) included the planting of the plane tree that still dominates one entrance, by Princess Margaret.

The area of the current Estate - opposite Sadler's Wells Theatre, flanked by the small Spa Green park, and formerly the site of Islington Spa or New Tunbridge Wells – had been designated for slum clearance and then partly demolished by German bombing. The park screens the estate from Rosebery Avenue and provides tranquil, oblique entry sequences. The entire site is included in the New River Conservation Area.

In 2014 Tunbridge Wells had placed a memorial plaque in the memory of Betty Knight for all her work within the community. In 2010 Betty received a special Mayoral award at Islington Town Hall for all her outstanding work in the community. Betty knight played an important role within the Spa Green Estates Tenant Management Association (TMO) which was launched in 1995. Betty Knight initially said that before the TMO the estate was filthy and was covered in graffiti and it is the job of the estates residents to become part of their community and to be able to change situations, people need to get involved in the management.

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