Plaque

At the top of the building is a terracotta plaque with the date "1894".

Richard Horwood's Map 1792-9 shows this street already developed with terraced housing and then known as Gibraltar Row. By 1889 the name had become Hayles Street.

Wikimapia gives: "... were built by the Hayles Charity which today is part of the Walcot Foundation based in Lambeth. Its origins go back to the mid seventeenth century when St Mary’s Church in Lambeth had acquired a surplus of £300 and it was decided to use this surplus to help the poor of the parish. Six acres of land in St George’s Fields, just over the parish boundary within the parish of St George the Martyr, was purchased in 1671 from Robert Hayle, a haberdasher and citizen of London, and his wife Ann. At that time, the land was just an open field."

The estate also includes the tenement blocks in the neighbouring street Elliot's Row for which Jamie Barras gives the architects as Waring & Nicholson and says they were developed in two stages 1891 & 1902.

The Weekly Reporter, Volume 10, Wildy & Sons, 1862 - Law reports, digests, etc. records that a case was brought in Chancery concerning these very trustees, as follows: when a vacancy required filling did the Vestry have the power to appoint new trustees to this charity or was such power "vested in the parishioners and inhabitants of such parish in vestry assembled." We are glad we are not lawyers.