Redbridge Town Hall is a municipal building in High Road, Ilford, London. The town hall, which is the headquarters of Redbridge London Borough Council, 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 I ...

History

In the late 19th century, Ilford local board was based in rooms above a shop in Cranbrook Road, and after it became an urban district in 1895, it moved into a rented schoolroom in Ilford Hall in High Road in 1898. Civic leaders decided this arrangement was inadequate for their needs and that they would procure a new town hall: the site chosen, which was already on the council's ownership, had been occupied by the local fire station. The foundation stone for the new building was laid by Councillor William Walter Gilson, Chairman of Ilford Urban District Council, on 17 March 1900. It was designed by Ben Woollard in the Renaissance style and was opened as Ilford Town Hall in December 1901. The design involved a symmetrical main frontage with five bays facing onto High Road; the central section featured a triple-round-arched entrance on the ground floor; on the first floor there was alcove and a balcony flanked by

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 composi ...

columns; there was a

cupola In architecture, a cupola () is a relatively small, most often dome-like, tall structure on top of a building. Often used to provide a lookout or to admit light and air, it usually crowns a larger roof or dome. The word derives, via Italian, fr ...

with Ionic order

pavilion In architecture, ''pavilion'' has several meanings: * It may be a subsidiary building that is either positioned separately or as an attachment to a main building. Often it is associated with pleasure. In palaces and traditional mansions of Asia ...

s at each corner at roof level. There were also separate

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 ...

es on either side at the front of the building giving access to the public hall to the east and the council offices to the west. Internally, the principal rooms were the public hall, the council chamber and the mayor's parlour. The building went on to become the headquarters of the Municipal Borough of Ilford when the

Duke Duke is a male title either of a monarch ruling over a duchy, or of a member of Royal family, royalty, or nobility. As rulers, dukes are ranked below emperors, kings, grand princes, grand dukes, and sovereign princes. As royalty or nobility, t ...

and

Duchess of York Duchess of York is the principal courtesy title held by the wife of the duke of York. Three of the eleven dukes of York either did not marry or had already assumed the throne prior to marriage, whilst two of the dukes married twice, therefore the ...

arrived to present the

Royal charter A royal charter is a formal grant issued by a monarch under royal prerogative as letters patent. Historically, they have been used to promulgate public laws, the most famous example being the English Magna Carta (great charter) of 1215, but ...

on 21 October 1926. Also present at the charter ceremony was the Lord Lieutenant of Essex, Lord Lambourne, who was subsequently commemorated when the mayor's refreshment room was re-named in his memory. A library was built to the south to the designs of the borough engineer, H. Shaw, in 1927 and further alterations were carried out, infilling the area between the town hall and the library, to the designs of the then borough engineer, L. E .J. Reynolds, in 1933. The town hall was covered with flags and

bunting Bunting may refer to: Animals Birds * Bunting (bird) or Emberizidae, a family of Eurasian and African passerine birds * New World buntings or ''Passerina'', a genus of American passerine birds in the family Cardinalidae * Blue bunting, a species ...

in May 1945 to celebrate

Victory in Europe Day Victory in Europe Day is the day celebrating the formal acceptance by the Allies of World War II of Germany's unconditional surrender of its armed forces on Tuesday, 8 May 1945, marking the official end of World War II in Europe in the Easte ...

towards the end of the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

. The building continued to serve as the headquarters of the municipal borough for much of the 20th century and continued to be the local seat of government when the enlarged

London Borough of Redbridge The London Borough of Redbridge is a London borough established in 1965. The borough shares boundaries with the Epping Forest District and the ceremonial county of Essex to the north, with the London Borough of Waltham Forest to the west, the ...

was formed in 1965. It also continued to be used as a venue for large events and also as the local registrars' office. The former library was converted into an art gallery, known as Space Ilford, which opened in December 2019. The London Borough of Redbridge continues to hold its council meetings in the town hall.

References

{{reflist Grade II listed buildings in the London Borough of Redbridge City and town halls in London Government buildings completed in 1901 Grade II listed government buildings