Hillingdon Civic Centre is a municipal building in the High Street,

Uxbridge Uxbridge () is a suburban town in west London and the administrative headquarters of the London Borough of Hillingdon. Situated west-northwest of Charing Cross, it is one of the major metropolitan centres identified in the London Plan. Uxbrid ...

. The civic centre, which is the headquarters of

Hillingdon London Borough Council Hillingdon London Borough Council is the local authority for the London Borough of Hillingdon in Greater London, England. It is a London borough council, one of 32 in the United Kingdom capital of London. Hillingdon is divided into 22 wards, elect ...

, is a Grade II

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

For much of the 20th century Uxbridge Urban District Council held its meetings in the Second Court of the Uxbridge Courthouse. After, the urban district became a

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 ...

in 1955 and the area then became the centre of a

London borough The London boroughs are the 32 local authority districts that together with the City of London make up the administrative area of Greater London; each is governed by a London borough council. The present London boroughs were all created at ...

in 1965, civic leaders decided to procure a purpose-built civic centre. The site they selected had been occupied by an office building erected by

Middlesex County Council Middlesex County Council was the principal local government body in the administrative county of Middlesex from 1889 to 1965. The county council was created by the Local Government Act 1888, which also removed the most populous part of the coun ...

. The new building, which was designed by

Andrew Derbyshire Sir Andrew George Derbyshire FRIBA (7 October 1923 – 3 March 2016) was a British architect. He was a senior partner, later Chairman, and following retirement, President, of the architectural practice Robert Matthew Johnson-Marshall (RMJM) and P ...

, was acclaimed as one of the most famous buildings in the British neo-vernacular style. It was planned from 1970 and the construction work, which was undertaken by

Higgs and Hill Higgs and Hill was a major British construction company responsible for construction of many well-known buildings in London. History The company was established in 1874 by the merger of the firm of Thomas Hill (managed by Rowland and Joseph Hill ...

at a cost of £5.6 million, started in January 1973. It opened in stages from 1976 with a formal opening by the chairman of the

British Airports Authority Heathrow Airport Holdings is the United Kingdom-based operator of Heathrow Airport. The company also operated Gatwick Airport, Stansted Airport, Edinburgh Airport and several other UK airports, but was forced by the Competition Commission to s ...

, Norman Payne, on 28 April 1979. Derbyshire's design envisaged a

diamond Diamond is a Allotropes of carbon, solid form of the element carbon with its atoms arranged in a crystal structure called diamond cubic. Another solid form of carbon known as graphite is the Chemical stability, chemically stable form of car ...

-shaped building to the west containing the offices of the council officers and their departments and a more irregular shaped building to the east containing the public areas including the council chamber, the civic suite and register office. The main frontage to the public areas, facing onto the High Street, featured a

loggia In architecture, a loggia ( , usually , ) is a covered exterior gallery or corridor, usually on an upper level, but sometimes on the ground level of a building. The outer wall is open to the elements, usually supported by a series of columns ...

with eight entrances and a steep roof, with a two-storey block with a clock tower behind. The design made extensive use of brick and tile, to pay homage to traditional homely brick architecture of nearby buildings and suburban developments that were "indigenous to the borough". It was designated a Grade II Listed Building in April 2018. Despite its listed status, the building has had a mixed reception from architectural critics. In his 2012 essay ''Post Modernism to Ghost Modernism''

Jonathan Meades Jonathan Turner Meades (born 21 January 1947) is an English writer and film-maker, primarily on the subjects of place, culture, architecture and food. His work spans journalism, fiction, essays, memoir and over fifty highly idiosyncratic tele ...

argued the building was symbolic of the political climate of its era and highlighted it as an early example of a more populist, conservative style of architecture which aspired to be inoffensive but instead came across as patronising. He concluded that “the proudly vaunting philistinism which has afflicted Britain for three decades found its first architectural expression at Hillingdon.” A distinctive yew wood sculpture, designed by John Phillips, made up of fourteen pieces of wood suspended on a wire rope, was hung in the stair well leading up to council chamber.

References

{{reflist London Borough of Hillingdon 1979 establishments in England Buildings and structures in the London Borough of Hillingdon Uxbridge City and town halls in London Government buildings completed in 1979