Lost London, page 19
1880–1982
K
ensington Town Hall stood on Kensington High Street for 102 years. Its history reflected London’s changing social geography and the development of West London, and of northern Kensington in particular. It also reflected the evolution of London’s administrative framework and the energy of London’s maturing political economy after the Reform Act of 1832 (which basically gave the vote to middle-class adult males, shifting the balance of local power away from middle-to-upper-class Anglican Conservatives towards middle-class Nonconformist Liberals). It was all part of the Victorian metanarrative of civic progress, carried forward through a variety of public institutions whose civic buildings were tacitly understood by Victorians as symbols of progressive change and icons of local identity. Like schools, libraries and galleries, town halls served as municipal flagships, their symbolism ‘comprehensible to both the ratepaying public and the public which daily used the buildings.’1 The continuing evolution of London’s administrative framework also helps to explain the eventual closure and demolition of Kensington Town Hall, but its demise was also a reflection of changing attitudes to the built environment and of the neoliberal political economy of London in the 1980s.
73 Kensington Town Hall in 1962. Kensington High Street, running westwards from central London, was Roman in origin. A late medieval village had grown up around the church of St Mary Abbots, just west of Hyde Park, but it was not until the late 1700s that London’s outward growth caught up with the surrounding farmland. Then, for several decades, farms and country estates coexisted with long ranges of four-storey Georgian brick terraces that made no concession to their rural situation beyond the insertion of a small front garden between pavement and basement area. On the eve of London’s building boom of the early 1820s, more than two-thirds of all the land in northern Kensington belonged to just four owners; 94 per cent of it to fifteen owners. The parish of Kensington had just 14,428 inhabitants when two of the largest landowners, the 3rd Lord Holland and J.W. Ladbroke, began to develop their estates, capitalising on the cachet afforded by nearby Kensington Palace (where Queen Victoria had been born in 1819) and on the preference of well-to-do and upwardly mobile Londoners for the attractive landscapes of the rich floodplain west of Hyde Park, well away from the maritime and processing industries and working-class housing, to the east.
By 1841, the population of the parish of Kensington had more than doubled, putting pressure on the parish vestry, which in addition to its responsibility for the upkeep of the parish church was tasked with maintaining local roads, lighting and sanitation; with the appointment of parish constables; and with the registration of births, marriages and deaths. Some relief was afforded in 1851 by the establishment of the Kensington Improvement Commission, henceforth responsible for paving, repairing, lighting and cleansing of local highways; but the vestry’s meeting room, attached to the old parish church, was considered unsuitable for the meetings of the improvement commissioners and the vestry itself needed more space. It was decided that a new Vestry Hall was needed, and a site was secured on part of the old churchyard’s burial ground. The architect of the Tudorbethan-style building, faced with red bricks and stone dressings, and embellished with Dutch gables, Gothic statue niches and a domed octagonal clock turret, was Benjamin Broadbridge; the builder was Thomas Corby of Pimlico. Completed in 1851, it was a two-storey building with ground-floor offices and a galleried boardroom rising through both storeys. The cost of the building was reported as £5,000 (about £600,000 in 2025): a relatively large sum, incurred by having to ensure that ‘noxious inhalations’ did not enter from the burial ground below.2
Grand as it was, it would soon prove to be obsolescent. The opening of the new Vestry Hall coincided with the Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations, held nearby in Hyde Park, which triggered the development of ‘Albertopolis’ in South Kensington and the growth of North Kensington as a wealthy suburb. The rise in building activity that began in northern Kensington in 1859, and eventually reached its peak in 1868, formed part of a general boom taking place throughout the rest of London. But whereas in the metropolis the number of new buildings completed per year doubled between 1859 and 1868, in northern Kensington the number increased more than sixfold.3 Between 1851 and 1861 the population of North Kensington increased by just over 100 per cent; and in the following decade it increased again, by 92 per cent, to 120,299. Residents included all ranks of society, ranging from the aristocrats of Campden Hill (sometimes called ‘the Dukeries’) and the great men of commerce in Kensington Palace Gardens (‘Millionaires’ Row’), down to tradespeople and servant classes. The great majority of them belonged, however, to the prosperous middle classes. Their homes were typically terraced dwellings of three to five storeys above a basement, brick faced with plain façades. In the latter part of the nineteenth century, houses were increasingly stuccoed with heavy, columned porches and ranges of coach and stable houses at the back, while terraces gave way to individual or semi-detached villas in garden settings. The vast majority were built speculatively, the capital supplied from insurance companies, by City bankers and merchants, and by local lawyers.
North Kensington’s population of affluent middle-class families transformed the High Street with their spending power. In the 1850s it had been a narrow thoroughfare crowded with traffic and bordered by a jumble of buildings. In 1868 the Metropolitan Board of Works embarked on a street-widening programme that resulted in the rebuilding of many of the shops and the introduction of several self-consciously high-end stores, including Barker’s, Derry and Toms, Pontings, and Seaman Little & Company. By the 1870s, North Kensington had come to occupy a pre-eminent position in both the social and retail hierarchy of the Victorian metropolis. In this context, the Vestry Hall now seemed rather modest, especially as ostentatious new town halls, beacons of civic pride, were appearing across the whole country. Between 1840 and 1870 more than 150 new town halls were built in England, including some in London suburbs such as Chelsea and Hackney. Town hall architecture was integral to the new political economy of Victorian towns and cities, implicated in issues of progressive reform, social mobility and class identity. As cities, towns and suburbs grew in size and economic complexity, there were good reasons for building big, fancy new town halls. Democratic debate had to be accommodated, justice had to be administered, bureaucrats and officials had to be housed and, not least, civic pride had to be expressed. Growing municipal rate bases, meanwhile, allowed for the borrowing necessary for building them (though many were only made possible by cheap loans from the central government). Many of them were furnished with courtrooms, lecture rooms, committee rooms, back offices and storage, as well as mayoral suites, council chambers and great halls for formal occasions. Some were part of civic complexes that included police stations, fire stations, libraries, art galleries and museums.4 Architectural styles were wildly varied: what mattered was to be grand and impressive, with sculptures, mosaics, inscriptions and chandeliers. Town hall openings became part of the rites of civic culture, featuring bunting, processions and royal visits.
74 The Vestry Hall in 2008. Civic pride aside, Kensington’s Vestry Hall was too small to accommodate all of the functions of the vestry, responsible not only for Church affairs but also for a wide range of civil functions, including the care of the poor, maintenance of roads, minor law enforcement and civil registration. As The Builder pointed out in 1874, there were doubts as to whether it actually belonged to the vestry or to the Church authorities; or whether it could be used legally for other than strictly ecclesiastical purposes.5 By early 1876 the vestry had agreed that ‘the requirements of the parish demanded the erection of an entirely new building for the transaction of public business, and that whilst the patching up of any part of the old schoolroom would not supply the needed accommodation, it would be unworthy of the district, and that nothing less than the erection of an entirely new building would meet the necessities of the case.’6 The vestry had acquired an adjacent site on the High Street on which to build a new town hall, and by the end of the year, The Builder reported that the vestry had resolved that: ‘The style of architecture agreed upon is Classic; the front walls may be brick and stone, but stucco is not to be used. The estimated cost (exclusive of furniture) is not to exceed the sum of £18,000.’ Asked what the vestry meant by the term ‘Classic’, the chair responded that ‘“it was put in to exclude Gothic”. After some discussion . . . it was resolved that it should not be either Gothic or Elizabethan.’7
The vestry held an architectural competition for the new town hall which was, apparently, poorly organised. The Architect thought that sixty entries were ‘of commonplace mediocrity’. A professional adviser, John Whichcord, was appointed, but his opinions were entirely ignored by the vestrymen, who disliked his predilection for the Queen Anne style, fearing that a building which looked like a Board school might result. They chose a design by Robert Walker, and in so doing fulfilled the worst fear of the Building News, which had hoped that ‘a commonplace Italian design will not be selected’.8 Construction commenced in 1878, after a considerable amount of ceremony at the laying of the foundation stone by Lord Kensington, which was followed by a dinner held at Bayley’s Hotel, South Kensington. ‘Borough and county members, and such other gentlemen connected with metropolitan and parochial business’ were invited to pay one guinea each (approximately £100 in 2025) to attend.9 The completion of the building in 1880 prompted further civic ceremony, this time featuring Sir Joseph Bazalgette (Chief Engineer of the Metropolitan Board of Works), Major General John Boileau (head of the building committee) and Princess Mary Adelaide and her husband the Duke of Teck, as well as Lord Kensington, with a guard of honour provided by the 2nd Middlesex Artillery.10
The town hall had cost £30,549 (equivalent to about £3.2 million in 2025). Walker’s design featured a High Street frontage of seven bays, with a central pediment supported by Corinthian columns. Clad in Portland stone, it was described at the time as being ‘in good taste, but presenting nothing remarkable’.11 Inside, there was a central vestibule, a large council chamber at the rear of the building, and a suite of large rooms on the first floor, including a large galleried public hall occupying the entire frontage. In 1899, in anticipation of local government reform and the establishment of a new metropolitan borough in Kensington, a large extension was built to the rear of the building to accommodate additional office space, another committee room and a new coroner’s court. Meanwhile, the Vestry Hall continued to be used for municipal purposes and, from 1889 until 1960, it housed Kensington’s central public library. It was listed as a Grade II building in 1969 and is now occupied by an Iranian bank.
The local and political significance of the town hall was intensified at the turn of the century when the London Government Act of 1899 made Kensington one of the twenty-eight new metropolitan boroughs that replaced local vestries and boards. Two years later the new king, Edward VII, conferred on it the title of the Royal Borough of Kensington, in recognition of its being his mother’s birthplace. The boundaries and responsibilities of the borough were extended, placing increasing pressure on the functionality of the town hall. Meanwhile, London’s growth and its changing patterns of economic development eventually gave rise to further calls for administrative reform. The London Government Act 1963, which came into effect on 1 April 1965, established Greater London as a new administrative area consisting of thirty-two new London boroughs. Kensington was amalgamated with Chelsea, to become the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. Although it was the smallest of all the London boroughs, it was also the most affluent, and even before the London Government Act came into effect, the renowned architect Basil Spence was commissioned to design a civic centre for the new borough. Built in modern style, using red brick, on a site just to the north of Kensington High Street, it opened in 1977 with the capacity to accommodate 1,500 council staff, as well as public halls and a civic suite.
The old Town Hall, instantly redundant, was put up for sale and redevelopment. The Kensington Society, the Victorian Society and other local groups promptly went on record as being in favour of retaining the building, but in secret session the new council’s Co-ordinating and Policy Committee decided to invite five big development companies to submit proposals for the site.12 Word got out, and Stephen Dawson, the chairman of Queen’s Gate Ward Liberals, pointed out that ‘The planning forum for this area, a group of 36 resident representatives whose task it is to advise the council of local people’s view on planning matters, voted by a large majority to retain the building in its present form.’13 Plans for a £54 million development of the site proposed by County and District Properties nevertheless went ahead, only to be turned down by the Department of the Environment and then rejected on appeal, partly because the GLC was known to be considering the inclusion of the old Town Hall building in an extension of the Kensington Village Conservation Area. In the early hours of Saturday 12 June 1982, two days after Kensington and Chelsea’s planning appeal had been rejected, contractors arrived at the site and demolished the façade of the old Town Hall. The leader of the borough council, Nicholas Freeman, was anxious to justify the pre-emptive demolition, writing to The Times that:
The intention of the Greater London Council was a politically motivated attempt to embarrass the Royal Borough. It was contrived by the Labour majority at County Hall at the behest of a group of local socialists here, cynically capitalising on the feelings of those who quite sincerely believed that the building should remain . . . If they had been successful in preserving the building they would have deprived the ratepayers of the value of the cleared site, which is estimated to be in the region of about £5m, or £700,000 a year, which is equivalent to a 1p rate, in perpetuity.14
75 The Town Hall during demolition, 1982. Others saw it as an act of political pique directed against the GLC. The Kensington Society called the demolition deplorable and shocking.15 The Royal Fine Arts Commission described the actions of the council as ‘official vandalism . . . decided upon covertly, implemented without warning and timed deliberately to thwart known opposition’.16 Further demolition of the structure was put on hold pending government review, but the government refused to give any assurances about the future of the site. Labour peer Lady Jane Ewart-Biggs pursued the question in the House of Lords, accusing the Tories of Kensington and Chelsea of acting like ‘back street scrap merchants’. Tory peers were defiant. Lord Monson maintained that it would be the ‘height of folly’ to try to preserve a ‘fourth rate’ Victorian building such as the old Town Hall. Lord Balfour of Inchrye claimed that he was one of a ‘great body’ of residents of the Royal Borough who welcomed the demolition of the vacant Town Hall, which he described as being of no particular architectural merit. Both he and Baroness Lane-Fox asserted that residents would be thankful for the relief on the rates which the proceeds from the sale of the site would bring.17 The old Town Hall was finally pulled down in 1984, the site redeveloped as a four-storey building with serviced office space and a brasserie, The Ivy, on the ground floor.
17
Baltic Exchange, City of London
1903–92
T
he Baltic Exchange building on St Mary Axe was one of the principal landmarks of the City of London, along with East India House, the Bank of England, the Royal Exchange and Mansion House. Built at the zenith of Britain’s geopolitical power and its dominance of world trade and finance, the vast trading floor of the Exchange was an arena in which the changing pattern of British trade and its shipping industry played out, hour by hour. The Exchange itself was the last of the City institutions to abandon its traditional trading floor to do business by telephone, fax and computer screens, and it is still one of the most venerable institutions in the City, having been a cornerstone of Britain’s maritime industry for almost three centuries. The circumstances of its demise involved two bungled attempts at conservation and had enormous secondary impacts on the district’s landscape, contributing to both the realignment of the City’s public infrastructure and the transformation of the skyline of central London.
76 The Baltic Exchange, 1903. The origins of the Exchange date to the early eighteenth century, when seamen and traders used to congregate in two coffeehouses: the Jerusalem coffee house, just off Cornhill, favoured by traders involved in Mediterranean and Asiatic freight, and the Virginia and Maryland coffee house, on Threadneedle Street, favoured by traders involved in North Atlantic freight.1 The growing importance of the Baltic Sea trade in commodities such as tallow and timber led to a name change of the Threadneedle Street establishment, as reported in the Morning Post of 24 May 1744:
This is to give NOTICE that the House late the Virginia and Maryland Coffee-House in Threadneedle Street, near the Royal Exhange, is now open’d by the Name of the Virginnia and Baltick Coffee-House, where all Foreign and Domestick News are taken in; and all Letters or Parcels, directed to Merchants or Captains in the Virginia or Baltick Trade will be carefully deliver’d according as directed.
North Atlantic trade fell away with the onset of the American War of Independence, but trade with the vast Baltic area, especially Russia, was booming. The British Navy’s need for commodities such as timber, flax, hemp, pitch and tar during the Napoleonic Wars (1803–15) boosted Baltic trade significantly, and in 1810 the coffee house company moved to larger premises at the Antwerp Tavern, also in Threadneedle Street.2 The company prided itself on being a place where business could only be transacted by a physical presence on the trading floor, where verbal commitments had the force of written contracts:
Produce valued at many thousands of pounds daily changes ownership without the production of a single document binding the bargain until the contract notes are drawn and signed. Confidence in mutual integrity after the conclusion of a bargain forms the basis of this apparently loose system, and anyone abusing this confidence, say by repudiating a bargain, would be reported to the Committee and upon conviction would be instantly relieved of his membership.3
