A Visit To The Magnificent Shoreditch Town Hall

The Victorians really knew how to do a town hall. I paid a visit to one of the most spectacular: Shoreditch. 

Shoreditch Town Hall has an amazing history involving Jack the Ripper, the Suffragettes and the Kray twins, as well as being a place of entertainment, administration and community in the East End for over 150 years.

Today it is predominantly a cultural and live events community space. They do occasional open days to learn about the history, that are well worth keeping an eye out for.

Origins In 19th Century Shoreditch

Shoreditch Town Hall was constructed in 1866, originally as the Vestry hall for the parish of St Leonard’s. This, in 1899, became the borough of Shoreditch. 

The site had previously been occupied by an almshouse for poor women, called Fuller’s Hospital, established in 1598 by Judge Fuller. This moved to Wood Green in the 1860s after the hall was built. 

To give you a sense of what Shoreditch was like at the time, the area’s population had grown rapidly from around 35,000 in 1801 to 129,364 by 1861. It was a distinctly working class and industrial area of London with people working in furniture making, shoemaking, working from small factories, workshops or cramped conditions at home. Overcrowding, poor quality housing and poor sanitation were huge problems. A terrible cholera outbreak in 1849, for example, killed 899 people in Shoreditch. 

It was against this backdrop that Shoreditch Town Hall was constructed. The Metropolitan Management Act of 1855 paved the way for the thirty eight London Vestries to build new Town Halls. The aim was to improve the landscape and governance of Shoreditch, as well as providing a space for all to use and be proud of.

‘The Grandest Vestry Hall In London’

The building was designed in two stages. The first, everything to the left of the tower, was designed by Augustus Caesar Long in the 1860s.

It was said to be ‘the grandest Vestry Hall in London’, with its Portland stone facade, Doric columns, tall ceilings and stained glass windows. 

In 1904, the building was deemed too small, so an extension was designed by William Hunt. It almost doubled the square footage and included medical officers’ quarters, three 1st floor Committee Rooms and the tower.

The statue depicts Progress, likely modelled on the figure of ‘Hope’, represented regularly in the Victorian era and most famously depicted in the Statue of Liberty. 

‘More Light, More Power’

On the pediment is the council’s motto ‘More Light, More Power’. 

This motto, seen throughout the building, was intended to encapsulate the progressive and forward-thinking values of the council and specifically came from one of its pioneering projects of the time. 

In 1891 the borough became the second London authority after Brixton and second in the country, to be given the right to produce its own electricity. They constructed an ‘Electricity Generating and Refuse Destructor Station’ at Hoxton Market, burning domestic refuse rather than coal or wood. This then powered an extensive electric street lighting programme. News of this innovative approach was heard around the world and Shoreditch was described as the ‘model vestry’. 

After going through a couple of different uses the station became The National Centre for Circus Arts in 1994.

The other keystone carvings represent other areas the borough were involved in such as Justice, Labour, Public Health and Support through Sustenance. 

The Council Chamber And A Victim Of Jack The Ripper

This is the council chamber. 

It was modelled on the classic Victorian vestry halls of the time and has played a central role in the business of the council. 

It was here, for example, that the inquest into the murder of Mary Jane Kelly, thought to be the final victim of the so-called ‘Jack the Ripper’ took place on the 29th December 1888. Mary Jane Kelly had been murdered and mutilated in her home on Miller’s Court, not far away in Spitalfields, on the 9th November 1888. 

The inquest was covered extensively and often sensationally in the national press and the room ‘barely sufficed to accommodate the jury and many representatives of the press who attended’. The Coroner proposed that the jury see the body and scene of crime. They therefore walked solemnly from Shoreditch Town Hall to Shoreditch Church, where the body was viewed in a small mortuary, and then on to Whitechapel, accompanied by a crowd of onlookers. 

The Assembly Room

The largest room in the building is the Assembly Room.

This was included in the original 1860s design largely because of the popularity at the time of Music Halls. The vestry board wanted the building to not just be a monument and place where you came for civic business, but also a place of entertainment and community. The inclusion of a public space like this was fairly revolutionary for the time. 

The Assembly hall was mostly rebuilt and extended after a devastating fire in 1904. 

The balcony is an impressive and rather over enthusiastic bit of construction. The free standing, concrete and iron cantilevered balcony is sufficient, in theory, to support more than three times the number of people the space is physically capable of holding.

It leaves the floor free from supportive pillars, so everyone gets a good views of the stage!

Music and Politics

Many of the great music hall stars of the day performed here, such as Katty King and Marie Loftus, ‘known as the Sarah Bernhardt of the Music Halls’. 

It was also a space used for political speeches and meetings. It was here, for example, in March 1878 that early women’s rights activist Helen Taylor gave a speech petitioning for women’s suffrage.

In 1913 Sylvia Pankhurst was arrested on the steps of Shoreditch Town Hall under the ‘Cat and Mouse Act’.

It was the eighth demonstration Sylvia had organised at the hall and had turned up with the “suffragette army”, armed with cudgels. Her bodyguards included Edith Garrud, a martial arts specialist who trained other Suffragettes in Jiu Jitsu. She was only 4ft 11 but could apparently throw policemen over her shoulder. 

Sylvia was arrested under the Prisoners (Temporary Discharge for Ill-Health) Act 1913, better known as the Cat and Mouse Act. It allowed prisons to release prisoners if they had become ill due to hunger strikes, but also allowed them to be re-arrested when they had recovered. 

Groups have met here from across the political spectrum including the Communist Party and Oswald Mosley’s fascists in the 1930s. In November 1947 Prime Minister, Clement Attlee, and Herbert Morrison, Deputy PM, hosted a Trade Council Dinner here.

Boxing And The Kray Twins

From the 1950s it became a very important boxing venue. Increasingly high profile matches were held here, with fans travelling from across the city to watch them. 

The 22nd September 1955 was ITV’s inaugural broadcast and it featured a boxing match at Shoreditch Town Hall. This made it the first boxing match to ever be broadcast on commerical television.

You can still see the cable from which the microphone would hang down into the middle of the room. 

Oliver Reed was a regular, as were the infamous East End gangsters, the Kray Twins. They are said to have held illegal card games here in the 1960s.

They would take place in the lobby area of the men’s toilets, during boxing matches, so that if the police raided they could disperse into the toilets and pretend they were simply making use of the facilities. 

At one boxing match there was a ‘charity auction’ of a few items from the ring. The Krays bid for everything, often increasing bids between the two of them. The final item was a huge bouquet of flowers, with the Krays again being the highest bidders. After the applause died down, they apparently passed the bouquet back to the auctioneer and said: “Give this to the nurse’s home, with our compliments”.

‘Whirl-y-Gig’ Nights And A Period Of Neglect

The London Government Act of 1963 led to the creation of the GLC and the amalgamation of the London boroughs. Shoreditch was absorbed into the London Borough of Hackney and the council instead resided at Hackney Town Hall. 

In the 1960s and 70s the council hid or stripped the building of many historic features. It was thankfully Grade II listed in 1975, giving it some level of protection from changes. 

In the early 1990s the Hall hosted the infamous ‘Whirl-y-gig’ trance nights. There was no alcohol (no doubt plenty of other substances were consumed), families were welcome and a huge silk parachute would drop from the balcony as a grand finale. You can see a few videos on Youtube from those nights.

With little attention to its maintenance however it gradually fell into disrepair and in 1996 was put on English Heritage’s At Risk register. The option of selling for commercial use was looked into, but, thankfully, the Shoreditch Town Hall Trust was established to keep it in use as a community building.

£3 million were raised and spent to restore the building in 2002. It reopened to the public in 2004 and up until 2012 it was largely a dry-hire venue. It even hosted Elton John’s extravagant 50th birthday party. 

The Hall Today 

The Hall today is once again a real community hub, used as a cultural and live events space. In 2012 an in-house arts programme was introduced and many more millions of pounds have been invested into the building. 

Their busy calendar includes theatre, cabaret, music, dance and talks.

There is also space and capacity given for rehearsals and research and development residencies. They also have a free space for creatives to work. 

The atmospheric, warren-like basement space, called ‘The Ditch’, has been left in an untouched state.

It is perfect for immersive theatre and a unique venue for other events. 

The building is also home to the Michelin star restaurant The Clove Club and is also used occasionally in filming.

Shoreditch Town Hall featured in Baby Reindeer for example.

The Trust is totally self-funded and runs on the money it makes from its shows and events. Find out more about what they do and what events are coming up here.

Thank you very much for reading as always, more London history below…