Thursday, 31 May, 2018
31st May is London History Day. This custom started last year. It coincides with the school holidays. More than 70 museums, galleries and cultural spaces were open and one that I noticed was a tour of the Hackney Town Hall and vaults so I booked a spot for 1pm.
Krish woke up with a terrible back ache and couldn’t move much for some time so it was hit and miss that I’d even go. Then things got better all around.
So on that warm, muggy day I raced over to the town hall and sat in the lobby with over a dozen other visitors, waiting for our guide. She turned up, armed with a stack of paper and wearing these shoes…
Who wears shoes like this to climb stairs, stand about, and walk around for an hour? So funny! Is it OK to criticise a tour guide? Then, I will. We learned later that this was her first time but I can’t help wondering why Hackney Council chose her for this job and do hope she gets better! Ninety per cent of the spiel was read from a paper, without expression and – guess what – reading into a paper script means your voice doesn’t travel. I honestly didn’t hear much of what was said so I’m going online to find out the history that we were surely told! Hope this guide gets better.
One thing I do remember is that the newest Portland stone Town Hall is 81 years old and that it is the third incarnation – the first being over at St Augustine’s Tower, and is small and now converted to Coral, a betting shop, the second was right on Mare Street taking up the space that the Town Hall square now occupies. Today’s borough was formed in 1965 when the smaller boroughs of Stoke Newington and Shoreditch were merged into the original borough of Hackney. It now forms the largest borough in London.
The Town Hall cost £99,870 to build in its promised ‘conventional but not showy’ style. It took three years to get there – from 1934-37.
Hackney’s shield shows St. Augustine’s Tower at the top. An eight-pointed Maltese Cross, for Hackney, which derives from the symbols of the Orders of the Knights Templar and Knights of St. John, both of whom held the Manor of Hackney. Three bells representing Shoreditch, these are the bells in the nursery rhyme Oranges and Lemons. Oaks for Stoke Newington, representing its origins in the Forest of Middlesex.
The motto is Justitia turris nostra – Being fair is what makes us strong! Or “Justice is our Tower” (reference to St Augustine’s)
Despite its limited budget, the architects managed to incorporate the art deco style of the times and, although spare, there’s enough evidence of this.
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