HTAG Guildford - The Spike

The Spike

With promises of substantial funding from several charitable institutions it looks like Holy Trinity Ward is soon to add the Spike to its many assets. The land the Spike stands on was part of a planning gain to compensate Holy Trinity ward for the loss of amenities not provided with the development and we are very fortunate to have the opportunity to create something that will be of tremendous benefit to the whole community.

The Spike lies in beautiful parkland adjacent to a new playground. A superb setting to relax with a cup of tea from its caf. It will provide social facilities together with a permanent playgroup, mother and toddler group, Saturday morning club. Other confirmed requests are for music teaching (donation of piano would be much appreciated), dance classes, art classes including pottery, internet caf, adult computer literacy, adult and basic skills learning centre, library, drama club, language club, social club, luncheon club, youth facilities, coffee mornings etc all at subsidised rates.

The Spike will provide excellent thoughtfully adapted community rooms to meet these needs and become self financing through sub-letting income of a local workshop and office space. In the final stages of the development public attitude through the ages since Elizabethan times to the poor and homeless will be preserved in an intriguing National Museum of the Homeless at the Guildford Spike. Here we have the only casual ward in the country to retain stone-breaking cells - visit www.charlotteville.co.uk.

Visitors cannot fail to be enlightened as they glance along the vast corridor at the rows of prison like doors to the cells, peering in the cells hearing the men at work breaking the stones, seeing their daily rations, their clothes, their bedding and bathroom and begin to understand the down and outs, how they came to be and how they have been catered for throughout the generations. The Spike Museum will attract students of the poor laws and schoolchildren.