Acton Town Hall

Former Acton Town Hall, now municipal offices. Built 1909-10 to designs by Raffles and Gridley (borough engineer and surveyor D J Ebbetts), and extended 1938-9 by W G Cross (Borough Engineer and Architect) with W Leicester as job architect and Robert Atkinson as consultant. The building is constructed of Portland stone and local red brick made by George Wright of Acton, with concrete floors. The original section has a green Westmorland slate roof, while the 1930s extension has a copper roof. Stone and brick banded chimneys feature throughout. The structure comprises three storeys and a basement, arranged in a complex 'E' shaped plan that follows the line of the surrounding streets, with a prominent clock tower facing High Street. The original building was designed with future extension in mind, and the additions to the side respect and reflect the form of the older work.

The original building's front range contains an assembly hall with stage and balcony set over offices, while the rear stem of the 'E' houses the council chamber on the first floor. The remainder of the building comprises offices.

The old building presents a seven-bay symmetrical frontage to Winchester Street in the style of a Baroque palazzo. The stone ground floor forms a rusticated plinth to the piano nobile above, with brick banding to the second floor beneath dentilled eaves. The flanking bays project forward under gables inset with cartouches and rusticated quoins. Tripartite sash windows serve the ground and second floors, while casements light the first floor. Ground and first-floor windows stand under heavy keystones, and first-floor windows have stone aprons, all set in stone surrounds. A central segmental-arched doorcase with engaged Roman Doric columns projects forward of square pilasters, crowned with a keystone to the round arch containing wrought ironwork and double doors. This entrance is reached via a stone bridge over an area, with wrought-iron railings by Whiteside and Carlake of Edmonton forming an integral part of the composition. The side elevation to Salisbury Street features a Venetian window lighting the council chamber, with a similar window opening onto an internal courtyard. The council chamber is topped by a separate pyramidal roof surmounted by a cupola.

Internally, the old building has offices arranged in two wings on the ground and first floors, with those at the rear linked by a spiral staircase. The entrance hall is simple, with a terrazzo floor and memorials to officials who died in the Great War. Further offices and a former staff flat occupy the second floor. Many rooms retain original timber fireplaces, now blocked, with those on the first floor being more elaborate. The former Clerk's office features columns and a decorative plaster ceiling, while other rooms have only cornices. Terrazzo floors line the corridors, and double timber doors surmount the stairs. Artificial stone stairs with marble dado and cast-iron balustrade surround ascend under a decorated plaster ceiling. The first-floor council chamber, positioned at the quieter rear of the site, has an ornamental fibrous plaster ceiling, cove and cornice executed by Gilbert Seale of Camberwell, supported on parian artificial stone columns and pilasters. The walls are finished with Austrian oak dado. The room has always had a flat floor, with an alcove at the rear that formerly housed the public gallery, accessed via separate entry from Salisbury Street. A second door is marked 'For Members Only'.

The new 1938-9 building presents six bays to Winchester Street, respecting the style of the earlier structure and continuing its materials, mouldings and railings, with flat-topped architrave surrounds to first-floor windows. A three-bay skewed corner elevation features three first-floor windows under segmental pediments, set beneath a high flat parapet inscribed TOWN HALL, ERECTED MCMXXXIX, GEORGIUS VI REX. Second-floor windows pivot on this elevation. The elevation to High Street is asymmetrical, composed of 2-3-4-1 bays with a broad blind bay to the eastern end housing the stage structure to the assembly hall. The centrepiece contains three bays with the principal entrance under a first-floor balcony and set-back picture window, the borough coat of arms and set-back clock tower, all executed in Portland stone in a very austere Scandinavian style. Double doors to the balcony and flanking windows feature small steel panes and armorial glass. Three tiny attic windows appear in the lowest of the three storeys of the clock tower, with louvres and clockfaces on the uppermost section beneath a copper roof topped by an acorn finial. Rear elevations display flat-topped casement windows in flush stone surrounds.

The interior of the 1938-9 wing is dominated by the main staircase, walled with travertine marble beneath deep coves and featuring a steel, bronze and patterned glass balustrade to the travertine Imperial staircase. Circular light fittings are inset into round ceiling coves. The doors are figured and panelled, creating a grand public space in the best 1930s tradition. The assembly hall, with its stage set within a slightly curved proscenium frame and adjoining dressing rooms, is lined in Indian greywood to sill level and features a sprung floor and balcony with fixed seating. Inset lighting appears to the sides and in the main ceiling, with ventilation grilles set in soffits.

Adjoining the assembly hall is the former reception room, panelled in sycamore to ceiling height and consequently originally known as the Sycamore Room. Folding doors link the reception room to the main foyer. Corridors either side of the staircase on the ground floor and to the west on the first floor are screened by double glazed doors set in glazed surrounds, all with small steel panes. The principal rooms retain panelling to doorhead height. Former committee rooms on the first floor, panelled respectively in walnut, light oak and dark oak but now in office use, have opaque glass double doors with deco mouldings.

Acton Town Hall was the product of two public competitions, held in 1903 and 1907. Minor scandals following the first competition necessitated a simple, low-budget building to satisfy the ratepayers. The design shows the influence of R Norman Shaw, assessor to the second competition. The building was always intended to be extended. The Middlesex Chronicle of 12 March 1910 proclaimed: 'Surely, nowhere in England has such an edifice been erected, and for such a price'. Robert Atkinson, one of the leading private architects from the late 1930s onwards to specialise in public commissions, influenced the main entrance design through his use of good materials in a simple, Scandinavian-inspired fashion. The result is a harmonious juxtaposition of Edwardian and 1930s styles, both of high quality and demonstrative of civic architecture across the first half of the twentieth century. The executing architect W G Cross succeeded in harmonising the new with the old in style, materials and planning.