please empty your brain below |
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It sounds like you got the same guide to Lambeth Town Hall as I did - a very friendly and knowledgeable Lib Dem councillor. I wrote him an e-mail thanking him, and he told me they'd had 63 visitors on Saturday and 93 on Sunday, and he was going to press the Council to do it again next year. That said, I was the only person on my tour. |
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A wonderful way to spend your Open House. I popped into Shoreditch town hall, which also has an impressive ball room (and former boxing ring). Using your criteria:
(Tour guide: member of Friends of STH) (Tour size: ~20) (Worth seeing? Yes, ish) |
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Did you visit Deptford Town Hall? (Not sure if it was open last weekend) - it has a lovely staircase and a sweet little green dome. |
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I was going to mention Shoreditch Town Hall, but M@ beat me to it. But here's a photo of the old Shoreditch crest, with their wonderful motto, "More Light - More Power" |
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I'm quite fond of Barking Town Hall - it's easily the best building in the town/borough (oh that is to damn with faint praise indeed), if a bit too hemmed in by the recent ghastly redevelopment, after it got loads of space around it in the 1960s ghastly redevelopment. But Brian Eno told the Guardian it was his favourite building in the world, which might suggest he'd never travelled very much outside of Barking. And the old Hornsey town hall interests me as a bit of Dutch-style modernism, supposedly a big influence on Charles Holden. |
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I missed Barking Town Hall, alas, because it was only open on Saturday. I also missed Havering, Redbridge, Dagenham, Woolwich, Chiswick and Ealing. But I did go round Shoreditch Town Hall for Open House back in 2007, and Hornsey last year. |
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Great post. I only visited one venue this year: Dagenham Civic Centre. An imposing building from the outside and full of marble and art deco details within. Sadly now falling into disuse as a council meeting place in favour of Barking which is closer to the Underground and has better wheelchair access. Although Walthamstow is easily my favourite exterior.
These buildings reveal a lot about the localities they served and when they reached their economic pinnacle either in the Victorian era or as interwar suburbs. One clarification: civil and church vestries were unambiguously split in two in the metropolis in 1855, so when Clerkenwell Vestry Hall was built it was an entirely civil affair. |
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I LOVE town halls. But for the truly magnificent, you must venture north (and I don't mean Barnet) |
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