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Our beginnings
The Victorian past
Field Lane is a modern charity with a long and interesting past originating in the crowded courtyards and alleys of Clerkenwell in Dickens’ London.
Andrew Provan, a London City Missioner came to the notorious ‘Field Lane’ area in 1841 to teach the children and young people the Christian gospel. So many children came to hear him and learn basic literacy to read the Bible themselves, that a committee was formed of friends and supporters of Provan. The Field Lane Ragged School was then founded. By 1860 the school was teaching up to 523 children and young people every day in one enormous classroom.
The charity was at the forefront of the Victorian awakening to the plight and the potential of these children and its Ragged School became one of the most well known. The conditions of one family as reported by the school’s Visitor in the 1858 Annual Report were typical of many of the children’s homes:
‘Being absent for two or three days I visited them; four children were lying at the corner of the room, on a little straw; and a broken chair, an old table, and bedstead comprised all the furniture; no fire; the mother crying – for forty eight hours she had not tasted food, nor her husband nor her children…’
It was clear to the founders that poverty –caused by unemployment, sickness or family breakdown - overcrowding in the houses and tenements and lack of opportunity were major obstacles for their pupils. Other services such as visiting the sick, distributing maternity baskets and providing job training and placements through an industrial school were introduced. Night refuges were opened. In 1860 the male refuge recorded 32,736 nights lodgings and the female refuge, over 16,000.
Illustrious supporters
Lord Shaftesbury became President in 1843 and was constant in his support for the work of the Field Lane Ragged School until his death in 1885. He used his experience of the School’s work and the conditions in which the families and children had to live, to press for change in legislation. Lord Shaftesbury was also the President of the Ragged School Union, later to become the Shaftesbury Society, which Field Lane had helped to found in 1844.
In 1843, Charles Dickens visited the school which he wrote about in Household Words (1850-1859) and he later donated a trough ‘so the boys may wash and for a supervisor’! Dickens had used the area called Field Lane as a setting for Fagin’s den in Oliver Twist.
A need for a shift
The Education Act of 1870 took away the role of the Ragged Schools and the new regulations about industrial schools led the charity to establish two new Industrial Schools, one for girls and one for boys. These lasted until the 1930’s. The introduction in post war Britain of a welfare state forced Field Lane to rethink its response to the community’s needs and marked a new era for the charity.
For a detailled view of our history read more here
Redefining our care and support provision to meet new needs
Working with older people
The largely unmet needs of older people such as loneliness, failing health, inadequate and unsuitable housing leading to an overall deterioration of older people’s quality of life caught Field Lane’s attention and sense of compassion. This new work led to the conversion of existing buildings, the purchase of new ones and mergers with other charities in order to offer older people a wide range of options. These now range from residential care to sheltered accommodation and staying home with day care.
More recently, Field Lane has developed an expertise in dementia. The number of people with dementia is increasing and only limited quality care and support is available.
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Working with families
The conditions in which homeless families in London were being forced to live had also attracted the charity’s attention and in 1985 a support service was begun. This work with families has expanded and adapted to the needs of families experiencing homelessness by offering supported housing and developing flexible forms of support.
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Working with people with learning disabilities
The closure of various institutions for people with a learning disability led Field Lane to open a nursing home in 1993, which has since become a flagship of positive and innovative approach to disability. Such success has encouraged the charity to use this new expertise to the benefit of people with a learning disability by developing supported housing that promotes life quality and independence.
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Field Lane in the 21st century
The next five years are expected to see further developments. In its business plan, Growing through Service, Field Lane has set ambitious strategic goals to continue meeting people’s needs and respond to changing social conditions.
- We will focus our services on life quality for
- older people especially those with dementia
- people with learning disabilities especially those with complex needs
- families and children at risk of future tenancy failure and/or family unit breakdown
- We will grow by increasing and improving our service provision through
- Managing additional care homes and supported housing places
- Developing community based services
- Developing training services for other organisations
- Expanding, developing and managing prevention programmes, accommodation and support services for families and children at risk of homelessness or family breakup
- Enabling effective service user participation
- We will invest effectively in infrastructure and evaluation for
- increased capacity and effectiveness
- efficiency savings
- improved communications
- understanding of impact
- improved grant monitoring
- We will build partnerships to
- Develop new services
- Support service development
- Gain in efficiency through sharing services and infrastructure development with others
- Attract new funding
- Influence mainstream policies
- Expand the role and effectiveness of Christian organisations involved in care and support for the benefit of the community
- We will expand geographically when the needs and opportunities are identified
