Signs of neglect: Heathfield House has been left to rot by owners Croydon Council

CROYDON IN CRISIS: The borough’s built heritage is crumbling into a worrying state of disrepair, with no one at the council seemingly aware of the seriousness of the situation.
By PEARL LEE, our south of the borough correspondent

Any Croydon residents who settle down this Sunday for the BBC’s new dramatisation of Great Expectations might be forgiven for thinking that, in the later episodes of the series, the rundown and dilapidated house of horrors into which old spinster Miss Havisham has withdrawn looks a little familiar.

Because after more than a decade of wanton neglect and what amounts to civic vandalism by current owners Croydon Council, that is close to the state that Grade II-listed Heathfield House now finds itself in.

Heathfield and its once admired ornamental gardens, standing in prime position in the Addington Hills at the top of Gravel Hill, with sweeping views across farmland towards New Addington, was once the home of millionaire philanthropist Raymond Riesco.

Today, it is betraying all the sad hallmarks of being run by Croydon Council, an organisation as bankrupt of imagination as it is of money.

Bodge job: the wooden bridge is unsafe, and unrepaired

After the council acquired the house and its 18 acres of gardens and rhododendron-lined woodland walks in 1964, following the death of Riesco, the buildings were used for little more than a council staff training centre… yawn.

Most recently, the house has been closed for more than a year, since Cressey College’s short emergency stay as tenants of the council could not be extended. The private education institution’s plans to erect an ugly nine-foot tall steel security fence, bisecting the Italiante villa’s terraced gardens, mercifully failed to win support from Croydon’s planners.

The fence “would constitute inappropriate development in the Green Belt causing harm to the openness and visual amenities of the Green Belt,” the planners said. Few questioned the suspiciously generous rental terms that the cash-strapped council offered to Cressey: a modest £5,000 per year, for an education business with a £31million annual turnover.

Since Cressey’s stay during covid, also now locked out of the property has been the nature conservationists at the Croydon Ecology Centre. They had used rooms in the building for fundraising and ecology fairs.

No one at home: the unopened mail is stacking up

Now letters and leaflets pile up in the locked front porch.

Worn signs point out that this used to be a training centre for council staff.

The car park on Riesco Drive stands uneven, with lots of flooded pot-holes that would put visitors’ vehicle suspensions at risk.

The grubby notice that warns that the car park is closed “half-hour before sunset” has been rendered irrelevant, as in fact the area is permanently open, with one of the gates off a hinge. Residents living nearby suggest that the car park has become a hotspot for crime and anti-social behaviour.

The walkways around the grounds are all overgrown. Trees have begun to enclose benches. The ornamental pond behind the house is hopelessly clogged.

Boarded up: windows and doors at Heathfield House show evidence of emergency repairs

The once immaculate lawn that runs down to the walled garden lies unmown and untended, with a forlorn wandering path across it where people have trampled some of the longer grass. At least it is shorter now than last summer, when it had been allowed to grow thigh-high.

The ornamental gardens of which the Riescos were so proud are strangled by brambles, the ornamental bridge now so rickety it has been closed off for safety at each end by a couple of thin nailed planks which looks very much like a bodge job.

The garden’s borders are barren, except where they have been allowed to become overgrown with grass.

But it is the state of the house itself that is the most depressing. Inside Croydon has previously reported on the failure of the council to properly maintain the building, which was built in 1837, and provide the care and attention that such a listed building requires.

Five of the windows and doors are boarded up. When we visited at the weekend, we were unable to get inside the building itself, but it is clear through viewing through the windows that ceilings inside sagging – a sign, perhaps, that the roof is leaking.

We never close: the unsecrured car park at Heathfield now attracts ASB, and worse

It is as if the place has been left to fall into ruin.

In among all the dereliction, those views to New Addington from the house’s veranda are not as pleasant.

Heathfield House’s history is outlined and it is still listed on the council’s website among the collection of parks and open spaces, with its “facilities” described as “Woodland and rhododendron walks”, and “Ornamental gardens and ponds”.

But that seems to be about as far as the council’s commitment goes to this important piece of the borough’s built heritage – and in this year, too, when Croydon is supposed to be the Mayor of London’s Borough of Culture.

There’s unlikely to be any money available for the council to conduct the repairs urgently required to weatherproof the building, or for gardening work to be done to bring the grounds back to their former standard.

Garden rescue: the once-admired grounds at Heathfield, with damaged walls and abandoned flower beds, is a sorry sight

Nor has the council’s leadership yet managed to come up with any ideas of how to make best use of this valuable public asset, before their own negligence sees it collapse to a state beyond repair.

The council has already pillaged and plundered part of the borough’s inheritance from the Riescos, in the ill-conceived and botched auctioning off of part of the valuable ceramics collection that the millionaire had left in trust for the people of Croydon “in perpetuity”. The fear now is that further council incompetence will lead to the loss of another important public asset.

Some individuals who have seen the sad decay of Heathfield House believe it is long past time that the dysfunctional council seeks outside help.

They want to see Croydon acting now, before it really is too late, by handing the house, its gardens and grounds, over to English Heritage or the National Trust, competent organisations that could take the required actions and secure the future of Heathfield House for generations to come, and before the council manages to squander any more of the public’s inheritance.

Read more: Public outcry as council tries to off-load historic Heathfield House
Read more: Riesco objections: Croydon Council’s squandering our heritage
Read more: Council’s botched attempt to airbrush Riesco from web history

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