Anerley Town Hall is a municipal building in Anerley Road,

Anerley Anerley () is an area of south east London, England, within the London Borough of Bromley. It is located south south-east of Charing Cross, to the south of Crystal Palace and Upper Norwood, west of Penge, north of Elmers End and South Norwood ...

, London. It is a locally

listed building In the United Kingdom, a listed building or listed structure is one that has been placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Historic Environment Scotland in Scotland, in Wales, and the Northern Irel ...

History

The building was commissioned by the Parish of St Paul's Church, Anerley as their

vestry A vestry was a committee for the local secular and ecclesiastical government for a parish in England, Wales and some English colonies which originally met in the vestry or sacristy of the parish church, and consequently became known colloquiall ...

hall. The area chosen for the new building was part of a site occupied by the North Surrey District School. The town hall was designed by George Elkington in the

Italianate style The Italianate style was a distinct 19th-century phase in the history of Classical architecture. Like Palladianism and Neoclassicism, the Italianate style drew its inspiration from the models and architectural vocabulary of 16th-century Italian R ...

and built by J & C Bowyer, builders, at a cost of £4,341; it was officially opened on 30 April 1879. The original design involved three bays with a central doorway on the ground floor; there were two windows above the doorway and three windows in each of the other bays on the first floor; a

copper Copper is a chemical element with the symbol Cu (from la, cuprum) and atomic number 29. It is a soft, malleable, and ductile metal with very high thermal and electrical conductivity. A freshly exposed surface of pure copper has a pinkis ...

-clad clock-tower was erected on the roof. The assembly hall was set to the south east of the main building and featured an unusual

hammerbeam roof A hammerbeam roof is a decorative, open timber roof truss typical of English Gothic architecture and has been called "...the most spectacular endeavour of the English Medieval carpenter". They are traditionally timber framed, using short beams pr ...

with the beams connected by

wrought iron Wrought iron is an iron alloy with a very low carbon content (less than 0.08%) in contrast to that of cast iron (2.1% to 4%). It is a semi-fused mass of iron with fibrous slag Inclusion (mineral), inclusions (up to 2% by weight), which give it a ...

rods. The building became the headquarters of the new

Penge Urban District Penge was a civil parish and a local government district located to the southeast of London, England. It included the settlements of Penge, Anerley and part of Crystal Palace. It was part of the London postal district, Metropolitan Police District ...

formed in 1900, and was significantly extended by the creation of three extra bays to the north west at a cost of £3,229 to incorporate a council chamber and committee rooms in 1911. Further changes were made to create a courtroom for

petty session Courts of petty session, established from around the 1730s, were local courts consisting of magistrates, held for each petty sessional division (usually based on the county divisions known as hundreds) in England, Wales, and Ireland. The session ...

s in 1925. The town hall continued to be the headquarters of the urban council for much of the 20th century but ceased to be the local seat of government when the enlarged

London Borough of Bromley The London Borough of Bromley () is the southeasternmost of the London boroughs that make up Greater London, bordering the ceremonial county of Kent, which most of Bromley was part of before 1965. The borough's population is an estimated 332,336 ...

was formed in 1965. It was extended with a new structure at the rear to accommodate a public library and also to create additional space for Bromley Council's housing and social services departments in 1987. The main building was converted into a series of fully furnished commercial offices in November 2003. The library moved out of the town hall into dedicated facilities in Green Lane in September 2014; this allowed the former library area to be used as a play area for children. Crystal Palace Community Trust, a local charity, obtained a 40-year lease over the building with the intention of managing it as a community asset in August 2017. Items of interest in the town hall include the first rate book dated 18 June 1827 which records the first rate payment by William Sanderson, a resident at "Anerly House", the first house to be built on the former Penge Common.

References

{{reflist Buildings and structures in the London Borough of Bromley City and town halls in London Government buildings completed in 1879 1879 establishments in England