The 18th century mansion house in East London facing an uncertain future

North Bank occupied a great location, in what was then a rural part of Essex with views towards the Lea Valley and Epping Forest, yet was also alongside a thoroughfare (Clay Street, now Forest Road).

The three-storey house was originally almost square in plan with basement kitchens, although two-storey wings were later added to each side, one providing family accommodation, the other was a coach house. Opposite was a stable and a cowhouse; the cows grazed in the meadows opposite, roughly where Spruce Hills Road is.

The former mansion house in a painting by Walter Spradbery

One of the most notable residents was businessman and ship owner, Octavius Wigram (the Wigrams were a renowned and large family: Octavius had 22 siblings). By the 1840s Octavius was leasing North Bank from the Cooks Company who owned considerable land in the area.

Later residents included Agnes and her retired Colonel husband Edward Thorp in the 1880s, who undoubtedly renamed the house (then named Thorp Combe). Provisions merchant William Johnson and his family lived there in the 1890s (by which time the house name had acquired an ‘e’ and an ‘o’: Thorpe Coombe), followed by the Day family; Joseph Day was licensee of the Tower Hotel at Hoe Street (later The Goose).

When he died in 1925 his widow Ann sold the house and grounds to builder W. G. Fuller in 1928 who sold it in the following year to Walthamstow Borough Council for the construction of Thorpe Coombe Maternity Home.

The complex opened in 1934 with new maternity and laundry blocks, but fortunately the original house was retained for staff accommodation following extensive modernisation with central heating and electric lighting.

Although the coach house was initially used as student midwife classrooms and resident medical officer quarters, it was demolished within four years and replaced by a new large central block providing state-of-the-art facilities including wards, nurseries, and consulting rooms.

The site is currently boarded up

In these pre-National Health Service days, a stay at Thorpe Coombe was not affordable to many: an average two-week stay was ten guineas for a single room and eight for a shared room. Happily, in 1948 it became part of the new National Health Service, when its name was tweaked slightly to Thorpe Coombe Maternity Hospital, and over the next few decades thousands of babies were born here.

The closure of maternity facilities in 1973 heralded the end of another era for Thorpe Coombe, although its medical services were provided for local residents as an Alzheimer patient treatment centre, and then psychiatry services.

By the 1990s the buildings were in desperate need of renovation and demolition was mooted. Fortunately, the fate and freehold of Thorpe Coombe house was transferred to the Heritage of London Trust, and a heritage-funded restoration project took place in 1997-8. The building was then leased and later sold to the North East London Mental Health NHS Trust.

A side view of the former hospital buildings

The whole site has since been proposed for redevelopment, with a new mental health facility and residential development, including conversion of Thorpe Coombe House to apartments. The Jane Atkinson Health and Wellbeing Centre opened in 2019, but the original 18th century house and adjacent buildings remain fenced off, their future use uncertain.

Karen Averby is a seaside-loving historian and research consultant specialising in researching histories and stories of buildings, people and places. She researches house histories for private clients and collaborates in community heritage projects (karenaverby.co.uk). She is also director of Archangel Heritage Ltd, an historical research consultancy providing research services for the commercial heritage sector (archangelheritage.co.uk). Also found on Twitter @karenaverby and @archaheritage