Prideaux House – Some History
There has been a Prideaux House on this site since 1962 when a Toc H hostel with residential space upstairs and community facilities on the ground floor was built. Prior to that, the old rectory for St John of Jerusalem Church had acted as the Toc H presence here.
Toc H was a movement born out of the fellowship experienced by soldiers stationed near Poperinge in Belgium during WW1. A military chaplain called the Revd Tubby Clayton opened a house where soldiers of all ranks could relax from the horrors of the Front
This idea of fellowship between people from very different backgrounds was continued after the war and Toc H houses were established in many big cities, offering accommodation, initially to young men and, much later, to both men and women, where friendship, shared meals and commitment to the local community were part of the experience. Local Toc H branches sprang up all over the country, including here in Hackney, combining fellowship and commitment to the local community. Toc H’s ‘mission statement’ used the device of the 4 points of a compass, asking its members to: ‘Love Widely, Build Bravely, Think Fairly and Witness Humbly’
In the early 1980s, when Toc H decided to give up its many properties as the needs of the people using them became too complex to be met without more staff, a previous warden of Prideaux House, the Revd Gualter de Mello, was invited to take over the building which he did, in 1982, with financial help from Hackney Council. Gualter had left Toc H in the early 1970s to found his own charity in Hackney, Friends’ Anonymous. In 1992 the name of the charity was changed to the Community of Reconciliation and Fellowship (CRAF), whose aims were:
‘To benefit the community through improving education, the furtherance of health, the relief of poverty, distress and sickness and to provide recreation and leisure time’
Gualter did not feel that the large Prideaux House was needed to promote the aims of CRAF, nor was it economic to run and so the 1960s building was demolished and the present Prideaux House took its place. The youth centre which existed at the back of the old building, as well as the land on Groombridge Road was sold to finance the present construction.
When Gualter de Mello retired he assumed this building would be sold but a determined group of local supporters wanted Prideaux House to go on serving the local community. A board of trustees looks after the maintenance of the building, financed in part by proceeds from our shop and from renting out a one-bedroomed flat and a studio flat, as well as the hall and two meeting rooms.
We are keen to find new ways of serving the community through hosting local events and groups.