please empty your brain below

Another great well researched article. Town hall architecture tells us a lot about a place in a moment of time. Confidence, industry, modesty, it is all there. What the successor local authorities did with these buildings also tells us a little about how they view the past.
Then again, there's the fate of County Hall in the 1980s interregnum in London local government...

BTW, the interior of Wandsworth Town Hall may be more familiar to more people than realise it. Its main staircase has been used for period-based TV programmes - I think it even stood in for Mussolini's offices in one show.
Here's an idea for an article: good things that happened as a result of Greater London being created. You've already mentioned some in your blog, for example the Thames Barrier. Can't remember if you picked up on Upminster Windmill being constantly under threat when Essex County Council were in charge? Once in Greater London it was viewed in a different way by the new authorities and saved. There must be lots more.
Caxton Hall may be the older one for City of Westminster. But the more recent one was built in 1890 and is in St Martin's Place. Don't know when it was sold but probably quite a while ago as I believe it was damaged during the war.

It has more recently been in the news as the place where the "Love Activists" had their pre-Christmas squat. The media kept referring to it as a former bank-which it was-but no one appears to have noticed the coat od arms above the door...
There is a picture of the old Hackney Town Hall here - https://municipaldreams.wordpress.com/2013/11/12/hackney-town-hall-that-great-dignified-centre-of-civic-life/
Had Newham's campaign to be reclassified inner London six or seven years ago paid off (with the additional money that comes with inner London status), it could have been here too.
This must have taken ages to research. By the way, sewerage is infrastructure, sewage is, well, ...
(| above) Why? You can't change history. If Newham had been classified as inner London 6 years ago it still wouldn't have been part of London pre 1965. The boroughs of West Ham and East Ham were part of the Becontree Hundred in Essex.
'Swedish Georgian'???
Oh, and it seems that the new town hall in Hackney was built beside the old one, and then the old town hall was demolished and the site became a garden.
Another consequence of the 1965 reorganisation of London government ("government of the Capital" in TLF speak) was that Surrey County Hall in Kingston-upon-Thames was no longer in the county that it administers.
Because this happened just under four months before I was born, in Beckenham, I can claim to have been born in London. Just.
@Boneyboy Not for the first time. When the County of London was created Surrey County Council inherited the sessions house in Newington and were based there.
Looking at the map of Lambeth it looked like the description of the bit of Wandsworth that switched sides wasn't quite right - there is a chunk of Tooting Common that is east of said railway line that is still in Wandsworth - so I just checked and apparently the chunk of Tooting that was east of the railway line did get transferred to Lambeth - but was given back to Wandsworth in 1996.

Oddly though they didn't do the reverse swap with Clapham Common, which is split in two by the boroughs but wholly managed by Lambeth.

Also - does anyone know if there are any decent online maps of the old boroughs? I'm enough of a local geek to want to know where the old boundary between Lambeth & Wandsworth was.

dg writes: The Act of Parliament, with the official wording if not a map, is here: http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1963/33/schedule/1
I wonder what prompted LB Hammersmith to change its name to LB Hammersmith and Fulham in 1979?
I know it's not the same kind of beast as all the other local authorities but The Corporation of London is inner London too, ain't it. It has a Guildhall instead.
@Steve
"Here's an idea for an article: good things that happened as a result of Greater London being created."
One could contemplate for example, what bus services in outer London would be like if London Transport had been reduced to the LCC area when it came under municipal control in 1970. Buses in Croydon and Kingston subject to Surrey CC funding?

@B Corporation of London was and is for most purposes an enclave of(County of/Greater) London: landlocked by it but not part of it.
Hammersmith is more Labour-voting; Fulham more Tory.

H&F had been Labour-controlled until 1978. It then went to No overall control - I wonder if the Conservatives managed to take power (wikipedia doesn't say; the council was 24 Lab, 24 Con & 2 Lib, so it's possible it shifted to Con/Lib rule) and made the change so that it reflected their bit of the borough more?
Is there any specific reason why Inner London (or the former county) extends so much further on the south side of the Thames than on the north?
Register office not registry office.
Thanks everyone. I've made about half a dozen tweaks to the post in response to your helpful comments.
@Geoff
You could probably find where the borough boundaries are on this OS map - the mapping varies from 1947-64 depending on where you look.
A very interesting report as ever. I am intrigued that the overall population across these boroughs has dropped by around 90,000 over the last 50 years and the only boroughs showing an increase are Hackney, Tower Hamlets and Greenwich. I really would have thought with the relentless house building seemingly everywhere, plus the massive growth in passengers on public transport that there must have been overall growth. Perhaps the answer lies in growth in the outer London population?
The Tower Hamlets council paper 'Eastendlife' distributed today includes a series of photos charting the changes in Tower Hamlets over the last half century- they have titled it 'Post-industrial revolution'!

Some interesting photos- I bet Eric Pickles is not happy to see this council paper continue to survive-though thinking about it who is Eric Pickles-no longer an MP nor a Minister just merely a candidate.
You are just a little bit wrong about the art deco Greenwich Town Hall. Yes the Borough kept the big hall which is now the Dance Agency - but the office block and the tower (built so the people of Greenwich could see the river) was sold in the 1970s - 'Woolwich Council sold our Town Hall' - in order to fund the, now demolished, Peggy Middleton House (in Woolwich)
I thought Hackney's old town hall was now the bookies at the bottom of the Narrowway. Has it had three in its time?
Erm, the old Westminster City Hall isn't by Nash, dg. It's this one.
@Timbo DG helpfully put a link to the statute so I'm going to point to the bit that specifically says The City and The Temples are part of this new Greater London structure :
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1963/33/section/2
Sad to see how few are in civic use. What has happened to civic pride...
@veronica
"who is Eric Pickles-no longer an MP nor a Minister just merely a candidate. "

He is still a minister. Parliament may have been dissolved, but the Government continues. The only time there is no government is between the outgoing prime minister seeing the Queen and the incoming one doing so. In order to keep this interregnum as short as possible it is the tradition that a Prime Minister who has lost an election does not formally resign, even if he has lost his seat, until a successor has been identified - hence the long delay before both Heath and Brown resigned - both were succeeded by hung parliaments.
Interesting fact about Kensington & Chelsea: Kensal Town (the bit between the canal and the Great Western Railway around Kensal Road) was part of Chelsea, not Kensington. My great-grandmother settled there after coming over from Limerick in the 1870s; she was landlady of the Lads of the Village (more recently the Village Inn) on the corner of Kensal Road and Middle Row.
I've made three more tweaks to the post in response to your helpful comments, thanks.










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