Stoke Newington Town Hall

Project Info

Hawkins\Brown has restored Stoke Newington Town Hall back to its former glory. Commissioned by Hackney Council and working closely with English Heritage, including consultation with the local community and stakeholder groups, Hawkins\Brown has fully refurbished and brought the much loved civic building back into the heart of the local community, providing a unique and historic setting for events.

The Grade II listed Art Deco building, designed by J. Reginald Truelove and built in the 1930s, has been carefully restored and refurbished to preserve its original features whilst providing flexible spaces with state-of-the-art audio visual and technical facilities. The two principal spaces within the historic building that have undergone major restoration works are the Council Chamber and Assembly Hall.

The Council Chamber features Australian walnut timber panelling, a dramatic plaster domed ceiling, vaulted galleries and ornamental gold cornicing. Retained and restored to their former glory, much of these original features were severely damaged by previous interventions when the Council Chamber was previously utilised as a storeroom for 35 years.

Refurbishment of the Assembly Hall included ?ne-tuning and upgrading the sprung Canadian maple dance floor and reinstating a suspended 1.5-metre diameter mirror ball at the centre of the hall to evoke the room’s dance hall days of previous years. A new contemporary entrance and reception foyer of bespoke precast decorative concrete cladding and sealed glazed walls and roof has been created in a former passageway and store area to unify the two spaces. A bar has been reinstated adjacent to the Assembly Hall and a new kitchen space has been created to cater for functions. The addition of new lifts and external ramps makes the building more accessible. The reception incorporates historical elements of the building, including the exposed brickwork of a Tudor mansion that originally stood on the site. Carefully preserved camouflaged paintwork on the external walls, is surviving evidence of the building’s use as the area’s civil defence head quarters during WWII.

The restoration revives the building’s existing palette of materials (original brick, hardwood veneers, Portland stone, fibrous plaster, slate roof tiles and York Stone paving) and complements this with a modern palette of bronze, reconstituted stone, concrete, glass and stainless steel. The removal of non-original fixtures and fittings and restoration of the bronze balustrade to the original Art Deco sweeping timber staircase emphasises the grand entrance to the Chamber. The existing dressing rooms have been extensively refurbished with modern facilities and the original cloakrooms below the Assembly Hall have been refurbished and adapted to create fully accessible toilets. The original coat rails, pegs and timber partitions are incorporated into the new cubicles.