Waldron Health Centre Walk-In

I was going to do a post about the Waldron Health Centre in New Cross this week, having had a good experience there at the weekend. Then I opened the Evening Standard tonight and there's a two page spread about it focusing on the the architecture:

'New Cross typifies south London. It is a place with points of interest yet lacking coherence. For many, SE14 is just somewhere the A2 passes through, a strange knot of one-way streets with some fairly swarthy pubs as the principal landmarks, any clear identity somehow divided by the road, and its major offshoots, into islands of council estates.

But there is more. The East London line extension has linked both local rail stations, New Cross and New Cross Gate, to the rest of the capital in a newly convenient way, which is the route I take to visit the new Waldron Health Centre, a long, timber-clad building completely redeveloped on its original site, opposite the New Cross terminus. It was designed by Henley Halebrown Rorrison Architects, a Shoreditch-based practice which has nursed this project through a five-year design and construction process... Waldron is elegant, urbane and it works — a towering exception to the rule of contemporary health centre architecture and a building that will endure' (full article here)

Well I agree with Kieran Long that it's a fine building, even if I have to take offence at the usual Evening Standard 'wow there's something nice in South London' tone. It is good that a public facility like a health centre is a landmark building, rather than some lowest common denominator box.

What I also want to highlight is what goes in the building, in particular the New Cross Walk-in clinic. This is open at the Waldron seven days a week (including bank holidays) from 8am – 8pm. If you live locally you can register with a GP, but even if you're registered with another GP or you don't have one, you can turn up without an appointment and see a doctor. They can deal with all the minor ailments that GPs deal with. On Sunday I took my daughter there because our own GP wouldn't be open until Tuesday and we were in and out with antibiotics in 10 minutes. Just a word of advice - the Centre can look closed, with all the shutters down, but if you go through the automatic doors you will be directed upstairs to the clinic on the 1st floor.

Opposite is this temporary hoarding...

... and the newly refurbished New Cross underpass with its metal flower design.

The Waldron Health Centre address is Stanley Street, SE8, but the entrance is actually on Amersham Vale, the road with New Cross station on it - just walk past the station and the Health Centre is on the right.