An almshouse for the 21st Century – Appleby Blue, Bermondsey

“With a narrow focus on physical and health needs, the current (health) system too often neglects what it is to lead a decent life in later years. The starting point for any system of care should be to ask ‘what it takes to lead a good life?’ This broader starting point would take us beyond solutions that centre on services, to place a greater value on mutual support and building on existing resources within families, neighbourhoods and community networks.” Source: The Generation Strain- Collective Solutions to Care in an Ageing Society’.  IPPR Report, 2014

Britain’s housing crisis is often presented as a problem of numbers, a shortfall in industrial production; it’s occasionally seen as a by-product of spiralling land values and disposal of social housing stock; too little is it considered as a failure of community-building. Yet behind the numbers lies an epidemic of loneliness among older people. Almost all forms of collective housing available to older generations take the form of a retreat. From private retirement communities to sheltered housing, retirement villages or historic almshouses, each model is an enclave distanced from the life of the wider community. Yet, as people live longer and remain active later in life, not everyone wants to withdraw, and for many, direct contact with the urban environment around them is profoundly significant.

In Bermondsey, south London, United St Saviours (UStSC), a Southwark-based charity, set out the ambition to re-interpret the traditional almshouse. They selected Witherford Watson Mann (WWM) as their architects, a role that here meant not just designing a building but collaborating to imagine a community within the city, an ‘almshouse for the twenty-first century’. Together, UStSC and WWM challenged the model of retreat, and looked beyond the simple provision of housing, instead imagining the new almshouse, Appleby Blue, as the hub of a hosting network, a set of rooms to share with like-minded local organisations. And, on 16 October 2025, WWM achieved the highest honour in the architectural profession, winning the Stirling Prize, with UStSC and Appleby Blue securing two additional RIBA awards on the night.

Also last year’s HAPPI award winner, Appleby Blue, provides 57 apartments for independent living arranged around a garden court. It sits directly on the bend of a busy high street, Southwark Park Road, and is shaped by its brick walls folding inwards against the curve in the road, a gesture of welcome. The high street elevation is punctured by a two-storey cut facing the street, from which a large, glazed bay extends out to the pavement containing a range of communal rooms. These include the generous, light-filled, two-storey ‘Garden Room’, for residents’ common activities, shared with each other and with outside groups. Coffee mornings, film nights, dance classes, music performances, and making workshops can all occupy this civic room; an intergenerational space in which young and old come together in a mutually beneficial way, sharing skills, thoughts, stories and support. Adjacent to the Garden Room is the ‘cookery school’, challenging the template that meals are cooked by staff just for residents, instead enabling residents and external organisations to cook together, learn from each other and create shared meals

So, tempting as it is to express the gravity of the housing crisis in numbers, and to focus on the number of housing units produced, guiding us towards hyper density or industrialised production, what United St. Saviour’s have done is look at holistic solutions. As recognised by the Stirling Prize Judges, by making older people’s social housing aspirational they have achieved what the bedroom tax didn’t, 57 new apartments freeing up over 140 bedrooms in council or subsidised housing. It’s equally tempting to jump from the ageing of the population to projections of rising expenditure on medicalised healthcare. The proposition here is mutual care – grandparents looking after grandchildren after school, the younger old keeping an eye out for the older old. The saying goes that it takes a village to raise a child. Perhaps it takes a city, a community or an almshouse, to enable dignified, active, and joyful later life? A good life.

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If you found this of interest, register for the Housing LIN’s final HAPPI Hour on Tuesday, 16 December, when Stephen will be joining Lord Best for the final webinar of our autumn/winter series, to coincide with HAPPI Awareness Week.

And if you missed these, in the lead-up to the Stirling Prize announcement, the Housing LIN published a viewpoint and case study on Appleby Blue. These can be accessed here.