Shoreditch Town Hall is a municipal building in

Shoreditch Shoreditch is a district in the East End of London in England, and forms the southern part of the London Borough of Hackney. Neighbouring parts of Tower Hamlets are also perceived as part of the area. In the 16th century, Shoreditch was an impor ...

, London. It 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 mid-20th century, the vestry board decided to procure a

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 for the Parish of St. Leonard's; the site they selected had been occupied by some old

almshouse An almshouse (also known as a bede-house, poorhouse, or hospital) was charitable housing provided to people in a particular community, especially during the medieval era. They were often targeted at the poor of a locality, at those from certain ...

s known as "Fuller's Hospital". The foundation stone for the new building was laid by the Chairman of the

Metropolitan Board of Works The Metropolitan Board of Works (MBW) was the principal instrument of local government in a wide area of Middlesex, Surrey, and Kent, defined by the Metropolis Management Act 1855, from December 1855 until the establishment of the London County ...

, John Thwaites, in 1865. The new building, the eastern section of the current complex, was designed by Caesar Augustus Long 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 ...

, built by John Perry of Stratford and completed in 1866. The design involved a symmetrical main

frontage Frontage is the boundary between a plot of land or a building and the road onto which the plot or building fronts. Frontage may also refer to the full length of this boundary. This length is considered especially important for certain types of ...

with five bays facing onto

Old Street Old Street is a street in inner north-east Central London that runs west to east from Goswell Road in Clerkenwell, in the London Borough of Islington, via St Luke's and Old Street Roundabout, to the crossroads where it meets Shoreditch High ...

; the central section featured a

tetrastyle A portico is a porch leading to the entrance of a building, or extended as a colonnade, with a roof structure over a walkway, supported by columns or enclosed by walls. This idea was widely used in ancient Greece and has influenced many cult ...

porch A porch (from Old French ''porche'', from Latin ''porticus'' "colonnade", from ''porta'' "passage") is a room or gallery located in front of an entrance of a building. A porch is placed in front of the facade of a building it commands, and form ...

with

Ionic order The Ionic order is one of the three canonic orders of classical architecture, the other two being the Doric and the Corinthian. There are two lesser orders: the Tuscan (a plainer Doric), and the rich variant of Corinthian called the composite or ...

columns on the ground floor; there were windows interspersed with

Corinthian order The Corinthian order (Greek: Κορινθιακός ρυθμός, Latin: ''Ordo Corinthius'') is the last developed of the three principal classical orders of Ancient Greek architecture and Roman architecture. The other two are the Doric order ...

columns and

pilaster In classical architecture Classical architecture usually denotes architecture which is more or less consciously derived from the principles of Greek and Roman architecture of classical antiquity, or sometimes even more specifically, from the ...

s on the first floor and a large

pediment Pediments are gables, usually of a triangular shape. Pediments are placed above the horizontal structure of the lintel, or entablature, if supported by columns. Pediments can contain an overdoor and are usually topped by hood moulds. A pedimen ...

above. At the time it was described as "the grandest vestry hall in London". The building was embellished with symbolic statuary alluding to the borough motto, "More Light, More Power", which refer to the council's aim of generating its own electricity to power local industry. On 12 November 1888 the inquest into the death of

Mary Jane Kelly Mary Jane Kelly ( – 9 November 1888), also known as Marie Jeanette Kelly, Fair Emma, Ginger, Dark Mary and Black Mary, is widely believed to have been the final victim of the notorious unidentified serial killer Jack the Ripper, who murdered ...

, the last victim of the

Whitechapel murders The Whitechapel murders were committed in or near the largely impoverished Whitechapel district in the East End of London between 3 April 1888 and 13 February 1891. At various points some or all of these eleven unsolved murders of women have ...

, was held in the building. Following the creation of the

Metropolitan Borough of Shoreditch The Metropolitan Borough of Shoreditch was a Metropolitan boroughs of the County of London, Metropolitan borough of the County of London between 1899 and 1965, when it was merged with the Metropolitan Borough of Stoke Newington and the Metropolita ...

in 1899, the building was extended westwards by adding a tower and an extra three bays to the five bays that already existed. The foundation stone for the extension was laid by the mayoress, Mrs Sarah Ellen Kershaw, on 9 September 1901. The design by William Hunt created a monumental structure which was completed in 1902. Internally, the principal rooms were the council chamber and mayor's parlour at the rear of the building on the ground floor and a large assembly hall in the east part of the building on the first floor. After a major fire in the assembly hall, that part of the building was rebuilt to the designs of

Alfred Cross Alfred William Stephens Cross (1858–1932) was a British architect. From 1889 to 1899 he was in partnership with Henry Spalding as Spalding and Cross, taking part in many competitions for building design. Cross and his son (Kenneth Mervyn B ...

in 1904. An additional wing to the south of the main building was added in 1938. The building ceased to be the local seat of government after the formation of the

London Borough of Hackney London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

in 1965. It was subsequently used as a venue for boxing and other events and in 1969 Ulric Regis died from brain injuries soon after being outpointed by

Joe Bugner József Kreul Bugner (born 13 March 1950) is a Hungarian-born British-Australian former heavyweight boxer and actor. He holds triple nationality, being a citizen of Hungary and a naturalised citizen of both Australia and the United Kingdom. ...

at the town hall. In the 1990s the assembly hall served as a night club featuring

trance music Trance is a genre of electronic dance music that emerged from the British new-age music scene and the early 1990s German techno and hardcore scenes. Trance music is characterized by a tempo generally lying between 135–150 beats per minute ( ...

hosted by the

Whirl-Y-Gig 'Whirl-Y-Gig'' is the longest-running world music dance club in London, England. It was set up by Ros Madden as an experiment of the Association of Humanistic Psychology in 1981, who passed it on to the capable hands of Richard Sutcliffe aka DJ ...

dance club Dance is a performing art form consisting of sequences of movement, either improvised or purposefully selected. This movement has aesthetic and often symbolic value. Dance can be categorized and described by its choreography, by its repertoire ...

. After a period of neglect, it passed into the ownership of the newly formed Shoreditch Town Hall Trust in 1997. Following an extensive restoration programme, the building reopened as an events venue in 2004 and, after a further programme of works, it re-opened as an arts and events venue in 2012.

References

External links

{{Authority control Grade II listed buildings in the London Borough of Hackney City and town halls in London Government buildings completed in 1866 Grade II listed government buildings