Tottenham Town Hall

Tottenham Town Hall is a municipal building in Town Hall Approach Road, Tottenham, London. It is a Grade II listed building.^[1]

Tottenham Town Hall
Tottenham Town Hall
Location	Town Hall Approach Road, Tottenham
Coordinates	51.5873°N 0.0724°W / 51.5873; -0.0724
Built	1905
Architect	Arnold Taylor and Rutherford Jemmett
Architectural style(s)	Baroque style
Listed Building – Grade II
Designated	9 August 1988
Reference no.	1249634
Shown in Haringey

History

In the 19th century the local board of health met at Bruce Castle.^[2] After the area became an urban district in 1895, civic leaders decided to procure purpose-built municipal offices: the site they selected for the new building had previously been occupied by four large residential properties: Eaton House, Wilton House, The Ferns and Hatfield House.^[2] They decided that the new municipal offices would be flanked by a fire station to the south and swimming baths to the north both to be built in the same architectural style and at the same time as the municipal offices.^[2] A school, to be built to the north of the swimming baths, was added to the scheme a few years later.^[3]

The foundation stone for the new facility was laid on 6 October 1904.^[2] The building was designed by Arnold Taylor and Rutherford Jemmett in the Baroque style; it was officially opened by the Chairman of the Council, T H Camp, on 2 November 1905.^[1] The design involved a symmetrical main frontage with seven bays facing onto Town Hall Approach Road; the central section of five bays featured a doorway with a stone surround flanked by Tuscan order pilasters on the ground floor; there were tall rounded-headed windows with Gibbs surround arches flanked with Ionic order columns in the centre and Ionic order pilasters beyond on the first floor; there was a cupola with a clock at roof level.^[1] The principal room was the council chamber on the first floor.^[1]

The building became the headquarters of the Municipal Borough of Tottenham as "Tottenham Town Hall" when the area secured municipal borough status in 1934.^[4] In May 1962, after Tottenham Hotspur won the first FA Cup against Burnley, a victory reception was held at the town hall and Jimmy Greaves held the FA Cup trophy aloft from town hall balcony.^[5]

The town hall ceased to be the local seat of government when the enlarged London Borough of Haringey was formed in 1965.^[6] In the late 1980s a memorial to Cynthia Jarrett, whose death in October 1985 was the catalyst for the Broadwater Farm riot, was erected outside the town hall.^[7] The building subsequently deteriorated and was placed on the Buildings at Risk Register.^[8] An extensive programme of refurbishment works of the building to the designs of BPTW was completed in December 2010.^[8] The works included restoration of the council chamber, which was renamed the Moselle Room after the River Moselle which flows through the area.^[9][10] The development also made land available behind the town hall for Newlon Housing Trust to create new affordable homes.^[11]

The adjacent swimming baths and the fire station, which both formed part of the original composition, were redeveloped as an arts centre and as a restaurant in 2007^[12] and 2015 respectively.^[13]