Mulberry Place, formerly Tower Hamlets Town Hall, is a building in Nutmeg Lane, Blackwall, London. It was the headquarters of

Tower Hamlets London Borough Council Tower Hamlets London Borough Council, also known as Tower Hamlets Council, is the local authority for the London Borough of Tower Hamlets in Greater London, England. It is a London borough council, one of 32 in London. The council has been under ...

from 1992 to 2023, before their relocation to the new

Tower Hamlets Town Hall Tower Hamlets Town Hall is a municipal facility on Whitechapel Road, Whitechapel, London. The new structure, which has been commissioned as the headquarters of Tower Hamlets London Borough Council, incorporates the façade of the old Royal Lond ...

Whitechapel Road Whitechapel Road is a major arterial road in Whitechapel, Tower Hamlets, in the East End of London. It is named after a small chapel of ease dedicated to St Mary and connects Whitechapel High Street to the west with Mile End Road to the east ...

History

The London Borough of Tower Hamlets was formed in 1965 by the merger of the Metropolitan Boroughs of

Bethnal Green Bethnal Green is an area in London, England, and is located in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. It is in east London and part of the East End of London, East End. The area emerged from the small settlement which developed around the common la ...

, Poplar and

Stepney Stepney is an area in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets in the East End of London. Stepney is no longer officially defined, and is usually used to refer to a relatively small area. However, for much of its history the place name was applied to ...

. The new authority was initially based at Bethnal Green Town Hall. In the early 1990s, the council decided to move to a more modern building, on the site of the former East India Import Dock. The new Town Hall, completed in 1992 and occupied the following year, was built by the Nordic Construction Company, with Birse Construction the main contractor. The new building formed part of a larger development of four linked blocks, designed by Sten Samuelson and the Beaton Thomas Partnership in the

Modernist style Modern architecture, also called modernist architecture, or the modern movement, is an architectural movement and style that was prominent in the 20th century, between the earlier Art Deco and later postmodern movements. Modern architecture wa ...

. The design made extensive use of reflective glazing and pink

Sardinia Sardinia ( ; ; ) is the Mediterranean islands#By area, second-largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, after Sicily, and one of the Regions of Italy, twenty regions of Italy. It is located west of the Italian Peninsula, north of Tunisia an ...

granite Granite ( ) is a coarse-grained (phanerite, phaneritic) intrusive rock, intrusive igneous rock composed mostly of quartz, alkali feldspar, and plagioclase. It forms from magma with a high content of silica and alkali metal oxides that slowly coo ...

. The name Mulberry Place commemorates the construction of

Mulberry harbour The Mulberry harbours were two temporary portable harbours developed by the Admiralty (United Kingdom), British Admiralty and War Office during the Second World War to facilitate the rapid offloading of cargo onto beaches during the Allies of ...

s in the dock during the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

, and reflects the sprig of

mulberry ''Morus'', a genus of flowering plants in the family Moraceae, consists of 19 species of deciduous trees commonly known as mulberries, growing wild and under cultivation in many temperate world regions. Generally, the genus has 64 subordinat ...

included in the boroughs coat of arms in recognition of the East End's weaving heritage. The ship bell of the sloop HMS Crane is placed in the Town Hall foyer. The ship was adopted by the Borough of Bethnal Green during the

and the connection with the ship and its crew has been maintained ever since. In February 2015 the council acquired the old

Royal London Hospital The Royal London Hospital is a large teaching hospital in Whitechapel in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. It is part of Barts Health NHS Trust. It provides district general hospital services for the City of London and Tower Hamlets and sp ...

in Whitechapel Road and announced plans to convert it for use as the new

to which the council would relocate when it became available. In 2018, the Mulberry Place building's owner LaSalle Investment, which charges £5 million per year in rent for Mulberry Place, announced that it would convert the building into flats after the council moved. The move to the new site was completed on 1 March 2023.

References

{{reflist Buildings and structures in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets City and town halls in London Government buildings completed in 1992