George Meehan House (formerly known as Earlham Grove House, later Woodside House) is a municipal building in High Road,

Wood Green Wood Green is a suburban district in the borough of Haringey in London, England. Its postal district is N22, with parts in N8 or N15. The London Plan identifies it as one of the metropolitan centres in Greater London, and today it forms a maj ...

, London. It is surrounded by a public park known as

Woodside Park Woodside Park is a suburban residential area in London. It is located in the London Borough of Barnet, in the North Finchley postal district of N12. Description The area to the east of the tube station consists predominantly of large Victor ...

and is a locally listed building.

History

The building, which was designed 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 ...

, was built as a private residence for Thomas William Smith Oakes, an

East India Company The East India Company (EIC) was an English, and later British, joint-stock company founded in 1600 and dissolved in 1874. It was formed to trade in the Indian Ocean region, initially with the East Indies (the Indian subcontinent and Southea ...

merchant; it was initially known as Earlham Grove House and was completed in 1865. The design involved a symmetrical main frontage with three bays facing onto High Road; the central section featured a doorway with

fanlight A fanlight is a form of lunette window, often semicircular or semi-elliptical in shape, with glazing bars or tracery sets radiating out like an open fan. It is placed over another window or a doorway, and is sometimes hinged to a transom. Th ...

flanked by paired

Doric order The Doric order was one of the three orders of ancient Greek and later Roman architecture; the other two canonical orders were the Ionic and the Corinthian. The Doric is most easily recognized by the simple circular capitals at the top of col ...

columns on either side on the ground floor; there were single windows on each of the first and second floors above the doorway. The philanthropist

Catherine Smithies Catherine Smithies (; 1785 – 1877) was an English philanthropist and campaigner for animal welfare, abolitionism and temperance. She was the creator of the first Band of Mercy, which promoted teaching children kindness towards non-human animal ...

, who founded the Band of Mercy animal welfare group which later merged with the

RSPCA The Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA) is a charity operating in England and Wales that promotes animal welfare. The RSPCA is funded primarily by voluntary donations. Founded in 1824, it is the oldest and largest an ...

, lived in the house in the mid 19th-century. Her son,

Thomas Bywater Smithies Thomas Bywater Smithies (27 August 1817 – 20 July 1883) was an English radical publisher and campaigner for temperance and animal welfare. He was the founder and editor of the broadsheet periodical ''The British Workman''. Biography Smithie ...

, who was the publisher of ''

The British Workman ''The British Workman'' was an English broadsheet periodical, published monthly by Partridge and Co in London. The publishing house of S. W. Partridge & Co. was founded by Thomas Bywater Smithies of York in 1855 in order to publish ''The British ...

'', also lived in the house at that time. The house was acquired by the

local board of health Local boards or local boards of health were local authorities in urban areas of England and Wales from 1848 to 1894. They were formed in response to cholera epidemics and were given powers to control sewers, clean the streets, regulate environmenta ...

for use as a public library in 1893 and it then became the offices of Wood Green Urban District Council in 1913. It was expanded with a single storey extension of five extra bays to the south at that time. Internally, the principal room in the extension was the council chamber but a mayor's parlour and a court for the local

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 were also created in the complex. The building went on to become the headquarters of the

Municipal Borough of Wood Green Wood Green was a local government district in south east Middlesex from 1888 to 1965. History Until 1888, Wood Green was part of Tottenham, and was included in the district of the Tottenham Local Board in 1850. Pressure from residents of the are ...

when the area secured

municipal borough Municipal boroughs were a type of local government district which existed in England and Wales between 1835 and 1974, in Northern Ireland from 1840 to 1973 and in the Republic of Ireland from 1840 to 2002. Broadly similar structures existed in S ...

status in 1933. The house remained the local town hall until the council moved to Wood Green Civic Centre in March 1958. Its role subsequently changed to that of a local register office for

Haringey Council Haringey London Borough Council is the local authority for the London Borough of Haringey in Greater London, England. It is a London borough council, one of 32 in the United Kingdom capital of London. As of 2022, Haringey is divided into 21 wards, ...

under the name Woodside House. The house was extensively refurbished by T&B Contractors at a cost of £4 million between September 2017 and June 2018. It was renamed George Meehan House, in memory of Councillor George Meehan, a former leader of Haringey Council, in 2018. The Earlham Suite at George Meehan House remains an approved venue for marriages and civil partnership ceremonies.

References

{{reflist Buildings and structures in the London Borough of Haringey City and town halls in London Government buildings completed in 1865