Former Friern Barnet Town Hall

Former Friern Barnet Town Hall

Built between 1939 and 1941, this town hall was designed by Sir John Brown and A.E. Henson. The building is constructed of load-bearing brown brick with Ketton stone dressings, metal windows and lantern, and a slate roof.

The main front presents an 11-bay elevation across three storeys, arranged in a concave plan with a rear projection containing the former council chamber. The central entrance features a bronze door with cross motifs to the centre of the panels, approached via a porch. All windows retain their original metal Crittall frames: the ground floor has three-light windows, the first floor twelve-light windows, and the second floor six-light windows, each with narrow stone surrounds and hoods. A projecting stone balcony runs at first floor level, with a coffered underside and ornamental iron railings; a heraldic shield is positioned at the centre above the door. The roof is crowned by a copper lantern on an octagonal base with a clock face, topped by a circular lantern with stars on the frieze and a star-shaped finial over a gilded orb. The side and rear elevations are plainer.

The interior is lined with polished Hopton Wood limestone on the ground floor and staircase. The entrance lobby retains wartime savings plaques in white Bakelite. An inscription relating to the foundation is mounted on the foyer wall. The double staircase features risers of Plymouth marble with bronze handrails and panels of etched glass between the rails. Two slender hexagonal columns, clad in green Cipollino marble with stylised plaster capitals, rise above the staircase beneath a coffered ceiling. The former council chamber is located at half-landing level, accessed through a screen of panelled etched glass. The chamber itself is top-lit, with an etched glass roof matching the screen; a pair of wood-sheathed slender columns flanks the entrance, and a recessed arch to the rear wall features a meander pattern decoration to its underside. The first floor retains its panelled committee rooms with double doors; offices on the north side of the corridor and on the second floor are plainer. Secondary staircases at either end of the concave block feature metal Art Deco railings with bronze handrails. The basement retains its wartime Civil Defence nerve centre, equipped with a Cyclone air purification system and air-tight doors to some rooms. Wartime murals of fire-fighters and Winston Churchill survive in one room.

Friern Barnet became an Urban District Council in 1895. A design competition for new civic premises, assessed by C. Cowles Voysey, was held in 1937; the winning design was influenced by Voysey and Brandon-Jones's Watford Town Hall of 1935. The foundation stone is dated 16 September 1939, with the hoppers completed in 1940. Construction continued after the outbreak of war, as the building incorporated a large air raid shelter capable of housing up to 600 persons and a control centre for local civil defence. This shelter opened in July 1940, and the town hall formally opened on 16 June 1941. Friern Barnet ceased to be an independent borough in 1965, from which time the building served as council offices. The building is little altered and represents a good example of pared-down modernism showing clear European influences, yet executed in traditional materials and techniques, with elements of neo-Georgian detail. Its unusual construction date, the extent of survival of original features, its subtle form, and pronounced sense of civic pride make it an exceptional civic building of its period on this scale.