The Kensington Vestry Hall is a former municipal building on

Kensington High Street Kensington High Street is the main shopping street in Kensington, London, England. The area is identified in the London Plan as one of 35 major centres in Greater London. Kensington High Street is the continuation of Kensington Road and part ...

Kensington Kensington is a district in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea in the West End of London, West of Central London. The district's commercial heart is Kensington High Street, running on an east–west axis. The north-east is taken up b ...

, London, England. The structure, which was built for Kensington Vestry and now accommodates

Bank Melli Iran Bank Melli Iran (BMI; fa, بانک ملی ایران, lit=National Bank of Iran, ''Bânk-e Melli-ye Irân'') is the first national and commercial retail bank of Iran. It is considered as the largest Iranian company in terms of annual income with ...

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

In the first half of the 19th century parish leaders met in a room attached to St Mary Abbots Church. In 1851, the newly appointed improvement commissioners decided that this arrangement was inadequate and chose to commission a purpose-built vestry hall; the site they chose had previously been used as a burial ground by the church. The new building was designed by the architect, James Broadbridge, in the

Elizabethan style Elizabethan architecture refers to buildings of a certain style constructed during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I of England and Ireland from 1558–1603. Historically, the era sits between the long era of the dominant architectural style o ...

, was built by Thomas Corby in red brick with stone dressings at a cost of £5,000 and was completed in 1852. Its completion was met with dismay by

ratepayers Rates are a type of property tax system in the United Kingdom, and in places with systems deriving from the British one, the proceeds of which are used to fund local government. Some other countries have taxes with a more or less comparable role ...

, who complained about the outlandish railings. The design involved a symmetrical main frontage with five bays facing onto Kensington High Street with the end bays gabled and slightly projected forward; the central bay, which also slightly projected forward, featured an arched porch with a stone surround, a prominent bay window on the first floor and a heraldic frieze and an

octagon In geometry, an octagon (from the Greek ὀκτάγωνον ''oktágōnon'', "eight angles") is an eight-sided polygon or 8-gon. A '' regular octagon'' has Schläfli symbol and can also be constructed as a quasiregular truncated square, t, whi ...

al clock turret at roof level. The unsightly railings were finally removed in 1880. By the 1870s the improvement commissioners were already finding the building too small and they relocated to a more substantial building in 1880. The old vestry hall was then converted for use as the

Kensington Central Library Kensington Central Library is a Grade II* listed building on Hornton Street and Phillimore Walk, Kensington, London. It was built in 1958–60 by the architect E. Vincent Harris on the site of The Abbey, a Gothic house which had been construc ...

and was officially re-opened in that capacity by Princess Louise, Duchess of Argyll in November 1889. The building remained in use as a library for much of the 20th century until the Kensington Central Library relocated to a new site on

Hornton Street Hornton Street is a street in Kensington, London W8. It runs north to south from Sheffield Terrace to Kensington High Street. History Some of the road, at least, was originally called Campden House Road. A chapel on the corner of Hornton Str ...

in 1960. The old vestry hall was listed as Grade II by

English Heritage English Heritage (officially the English Heritage Trust) is a charity that manages over 400 historic monuments, buildings and places. These include prehistoric sites, medieval castles, Roman forts and country houses. The charity states that i ...

on 15 April 1969 and, by 1998, it was "the only substantial remnant" of what the street looked like during the

Victorian era In the history of the United Kingdom and the British Empire, the Victorian era was the period of Queen Victoria's reign, from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. The era followed the Georgian period and preceded the Edwardia ...

. It subsequently became the home of

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kensington Vestry Hall Buildings and structures completed in 1852 1852 establishments in England Grade II listed buildings in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea Kensington