The Spike Vagrants and Casuals Ward is one of the few remaining buildings from the Poor Law era. The Spike was built in 1906 to house vagrants and low paid workers and after the 1834 New Poor Laws ended in 1929, it continued as a night hostel until the mid 1960s. It was then adopted by St. Luke’s Hospital becoming a document store, maintenance workshop, presentation facility and training rooms. With most of the hospital relocated to the new Royal Surrey site, the Spike was finally abandoned by the NHS in 1996 when the St Luke’s redevelopment started.

It was used as a site office by the developers of the new estate (Crest Nicholson (southern)) and over the following years was subject to a huge amount of vandalism and misuse. The intention had been to pull the building down and replace it with a new community centre that would serve Charlotteville, St Luke’s and the surrounding communities. This was never to happen however as, in November 1999, the Spike became a Grade II listed building and this largely due to the campaigning carried out by two local residents, Richard Battersby and Helen Chapman-Davies.

Sadly this did not stop the decay and vandalism and it looked like the building would either die a slow ‘death’ or be converted into ‘Key Worker Housing’ that would destroy nearly all internal parts of the building leaving just a small fraction of it (including the stone breaking cells) as a heritage attraction.

June 2002 saw a street party in Charlotteville to celebrate the Queen’s 50th year on the throne. The party was a huge success, £6000 was raised and more than 600 residents attended, with the result that the Charlotteville community re-discovered itself. Stories were told about how the old community centre at the end of Addison Road had been knocked down against the will of local people and how the loss of Coyle Hall on the St Luke’s Hospital site meant the Charlotteville community had lost an important amenity that would not now be replaced as the Spike could no longer be cleared to make way for the new centre.

One thousand pounds remained from the money collected to fund the street party and, rather than send this to charity, a commitment was taken to use it to benefit the Charlotteville Community. After two public meetings, many private ones and a local election, Guildford Borough Council finally decided to back the residents proposal and allowed the S106 money to go towards the refurbishment and adaptation of the Spike for community use.

And the £1,000? Well with a bit of fund raising, this turned into more than £1,600,000. Building work started 3rd July 2006 with the Community Centre opening on 31st January 2008 and the Heritage Centre opening a few months later on the 18th July.