Hornsey Town Hall - Local Government Before Hornsey Town Hall

Local Government Before Hornsey Town Hall

Hornsey became a parish in around 1300. This heavily wooded area contained farms and villas, one of which was Crouch Hall, probably built in 1681 at the crossroads of what came to be known as Crouch End. By 1808 the present Town Hall site housed the non-conformist Broadway Chapel, two cottages, an alley and the long low Lake Villa, the gable end of which faced the Broadway. In 1827 the pond by the roadside was filled in. The buildings in front of Lake Villa gradually became shops.

The 1835 Municipal Corporations Act had created 178 corporate boroughs in England and Wales. Corporations were to be elected directly by ratepayers, hold open council meetings and maintain audited accounts. This eventually led to the construction of significant Town Halls in industrial cities like Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester and Leeds. The Metropolis Management Act of 1855 began a process that changed the way London was administered, creating local boards.

Hornsey was a local government district in south east Middlesex from 1867 to 1965.

In 1867 a Local Board was formed for part of the civil parish of Hornsey. The rest of the parish was already under South Hornsey Local Board formed in 1865.

Hornsey Local Board was based at Southwood Lane, Highgate, from 1868 onwards.

The railway was to change Hornsey significantly. Hornsey remained rural until around 1880, probably because of the lack of adequate sewerage. Large parts of Hornsey remained in private ownership, inhibiting development.

Finsbury Park, the first public open space, opened in 1869. By 1887 Hornsey had seven railway stations. Crouch End was to become a prosperous middle class suburb due to an influx of mainly clerical workers who could easily commute to the city. Public parks were opened at Highgate wood (‘86), Clissold (‘89) and Waterlow (‘91). Crouch End playing fields opened in 1892. A number of new roads and avenues, such as Elder Avenue and Weston Park (‘89) sprang up. Crouch and Topsfield Halls were replaced by Topsfield Parade (‘92) and Broadway Parade (‘95). Ferme Park and the Crouch Hall estate were partly built up by 1894. The council built the Clock Tower in 1895 as a memorial to Henry Reader Williams.

In 1899 London was divided into 28 metropolitan boroughs, funded by grants and loans from central Government. This started an evolution in the role of the local authority - they became town planners, were able to build low-cost houses, were responsible for education and the social welfare of the people and eventually the provision of the basic utilities of life.

By the time Edward VII became king in 1901, 11% of the population of Hornsey were male clerks and there were nearly 8,000 people employed as servants, the vast majority of them women. The middle class, conservative nature of the borough became increasingly established. Hornsey was being compared with Kensington as North London's west end. A large proportion (15%) of the borough was parkland, population density was only 30 people per acre and Hornsey had the lowest death rate of any large town in the London area. Hornsey was incorporated as a Borough in 1903.

By the mid-1930s Crouch End was a solid, middle-class town with a thriving and popular shopping centre that included an Opera House in the middle of Topsfield Parade. In a society where rail, post, telephone, coal and water were government-owned and operated, the local authority had wide-ranging responsibilities, including the provision of electricity to the population by building generating plants. The reach of education now encompassed the libraries that had previously been established by charities. The Town Hall played a significant part in public life.