Hornsey Town Hall has seen its for­tunes rise and fall over the past 90 years – and since 2018 it has been a no-go area with the bar­ri­cades up and the doors firm­ly locked. The tim­ing of this could­n’t be worse – it has coin­cid­ed with the loss of so many local com­mu­ni­ty spaces and music venues coun­try­wide. But – just maybe – things are about to change.

Hornsey Town Hall was built for the Bor­ough of Hornsey in the ear­ly 1930s – designed in a rad­i­cal mod­ernist style by young New Zealan­der archi­tect Regi­nald Uren. Inter­nal­ly the spaces oozed grav­i­tas and lux­u­ry with lime­stone pan­els, mar­ble cladding and, for the Coun­cil Cham­ber, pan­els and soft fur­nish­ings by Heals. HTH was con­sid­ered a design suc­cess and RIBA award­ed it a Bronze Medal

Lit­tle changed, until the dis­so­lu­tion of Hornsey Bor­ough in 1965 when Haringey was formed under the GLC. At the time, HTH was devel­op­ing prob­lems with sub­si­dence; Haringey’s solu­tion was to par­tial­ly close the build­ing. The site con­tin­ued to be used as coun­cil offices till the ear­ly 2000s when they final­ly aban­doned it, locked the doors and left the place – quite lit­er­al­ly – to rot.

So the com­mu­ni­ty build­ing that dom­i­nat­ed the cen­tre of Crouch End lay unused and unloved, a sit­u­a­tion that nat­u­ral­ly caused ten­sions between the coun­cil and res­i­dents. After con­sid­er­able pres­sure, Haringey Coun­cil made pos­i­tive steps to bring the build­ing back into use and, in an inspired move that even they could prob­a­bly not have pre­dict­ed, brought in an arts team to take it on. ANA Arts Projects breathed new life into the build­ing and on a small bud­get its three mem­bers did what they could, incre­men­tal­ly patch­ing up and open­ing dif­fer­ent areas and putting them to cre­ative use.

For the next few years HTH flour­ished. The atmos­pher­ic Sup­per Room in the base­ment served as a venue for plays, meet­ings and live music. An airy ground-floor space became an art gallery known as the Ply Gallery. Rooms were repur­posed as a cafe, work spaces, stu­dios for after-school bal­let and dance class­es and yoga, plus spaces for massage/wellness. All found a home with­in the capa­cious and wel­com­ing building.

Crouch End Fes­ti­val, an annu­al sum­mer event, also based itself at the Town Hall where they also used the green for a craft and food mar­ket and an out­door stage for music by local bands, choirs and schools. “The End” music fes­ti­val also used the venue. ANA made extra funds by hir­ing out the town hal­l’s impec­ca­ble 1930s spaces to TV and film crews; Killing Eve, The Crown, The Hour and and a raft of pro­duc­tions were filmed there.

How­ev­er no one could stave off the inevitable and Haringey Coun­cil announced its poten­tial sale to devel­op­ers in 2016. Res­i­dents gath­ered at meet­ings to try and find a solu­tion and pro­test­ers camped out on the green. From its three poten­tial pur­chasers, Labour-run Haringey ulti­mate­ly chose glob­al prop­er­ty devel­op­ers, the Far East Con­sor­tium, based in the Cay­man Islands.

1. Protest­ing on the green. 2 Ply Gallery.

Crouch End Fes­ti­val 2018 proved to be the final event before the build­ing was shut for ren­o­va­tion, a move that prompt­ed the organ­is­ers to cre­ate a cer­e­mo­ny to hon­our HTH’s clo­sure and promised new chap­ter with an arts cen­tre. The clos­ing cer­e­mo­ny con­sist­ed of a con­cert with talks, choirs and poet­ry. This was fol­lowed by a han­dover cer­e­mo­ny in the Coun­cil Cham­ber where one of the 72 clocks was hand­ed to FEC in a sym­bol­ic ges­ture, and illus­tra­tor and writer Sean Azzopar­di read from his book The Voice of the Hall.

1. Sean Azzopar­di reads from The Voice of the Hall in the Coun­cil Chamber

Five apart­ment build­ings were con­struct­ed with­in the town hall and with­in its grounds. A hotel is on the cusp of open­ing. The build­ing has been ren­o­vat­ed to metic­u­lous stan­dards but to date, the promised arts cen­tre has not mate­ri­alised. The cyn­i­cal­ly mind­ed amongst us are not sur­prised. A dis­pute between the devel­op­ers and con­struc­tors has not helped mat­ters. And to fur­ther mud­dy the waters, HTH ‘may’ have been flipped – sold on by FEC. Free­hold­ers Haringey are refus­ing to divulge.

As for the cre­ative com­mu­ni­ty space, a chink of light is show­ing, at last. FEC’s recent­ly appoint­ed agency AND Lon­don are giv­ing per­mis­sion for HTH to be used for a Crouch End fes­ti­val event (June 14th). For­mer local res­i­dent Sean Azzopar­di has been com­mis­sioned to write a sequel to his first book and the new ‘zine, called After the Silence, the Hall Awakes, will be revealed at a talk in the Coun­cil Cham­ber. There will also be music by Pan Nation, hap­pen­ing on the Green. We await with anticipation.

A peek at the renovated Hornsey Town Hall

1. For­mer­ly The Ply Gallery
2. Recep­tion
3. The future rooftop bar
4. Coun­cil Chamber
5. Gallery space
6. Stair­case
7. The Com­mit­tee Room

As a huge admir­er of Hornsey Town Hall and a fre­quent pho­tog­ra­ph­er and user of its var­i­ous spaces I look for­ward to a new chap­ter for this icon­ic building.

Hornsey Town Hall.
Crouch End Festival