I have not been paying sufficient attention to my immediately vicinity, so totally missed that the Tower Hamlets Register Office on Bow Road had closed. It's been based in Bromley Public Hall for decades but on 1st September all the registrations and ceremonies transferred to St George's Town Hall in Shadwell instead. Administratively it's a step up because the new venue on Cable Street used to be Stepney Town Hall whereas the Bow venue was only ever St Leonard's Vestry Hall, part of a lowlier level of local government.
Bromley Public Hall is a lovely listed Victorian building with a Portland Stone facade and a protruding arched porch, conveniently located near Bow Church station. It has an upstairs room which can accommodate a hundred or so and a lift installed at public expense. It has a little garden at the back just large enough for the taking of wedding photos and a small car park visitors weren't generally allowed to use. Arriving in a big limo out front became impossible when part of the pavement was transformed into a cycle superhighway (but the new venue on Cable Street isn't much better because the road outside is a bus stand for route 100). I shall miss seeing large family groups dressed to the nines milling outside before their ceremony, and perhaps piling into the Bow Bells pub for a celebratory drink afterwards.
I always thought having the borough register office within easy walking distance might be useful should I ever need to notify anyone of a birth, death or marriage, but I never did. I did get inside once to be one of two witnesses at an incredibly low key wedding, so many thanks to the blog readers who invited me along and my apologies for being almost late to the ceremony. I also attended a talk in the upstairs room at which Tony Benn led a discussion about the Suffragettes, which felt very much like the kind of event the hall was built to host. I'm glad I got inside to see it while I could, because as of last month Bromley Public Hall is no longer a public building.
Indeed it's now available to let, according to a sign outside, should you have a smallish business requiring 5394 square feet of office space with a prestige E3 3AA postcode. According to the property company "The premises are currently configured as cellular offices, staff areas, kitchens and W/C facilities with a stunning large open vestry." It seems odd to think of this civic building as offices for something private, particularly the upper room where SylviaPankhurst hosted Suffragette meetings suddenly being full of workstations, telemarketing or whatever.
I don't know whether the closure's due to council cost saving, indeed I doubt it because St George's Town Hall has had to be revamped to take on its new registratory role. But it does seem a shame to have lost another public building to the private sector, in what's invariably a one-way loss of assets. Another local casualty is the former Poplar Town Hall across the road, vacated in 1965 and now a business centre. Looking even longer term, what used to be the police station nextdoor got taken over by a bank in 1903, then by a firm of undertakers and earlier this year they moved out to be replaced by an ethical coffee shop. Everything public passes.
Register offices have often been a useful way to give a former civic building a purpose and keep it in operation. People like getting married in period buildings and most boroughs have one somewhere that needs filling. So I thought I'd try and compile a list of where London's register offices actually are, or more specifically where boroughs host marriages and other civic ceremonies.
Elsewhere
• Ealing: The Brentham Club (a sports club near Pitshanger Park)
• Hammersmith and Fulham: temporarily The Clockwork Building
• Lewisham: 368 Lewisham High Street
n.b. These are sites for weddings and ceremonies, not necessarily for registering births and deaths.
n.b. This list was compiled by visiting 33 borough websites - many over-atomised, several unhelpful - so is by no means definitive.
n.b. The City of London uses Islington Town Hall as its register office.
n.b. Camden's website initially defeated me, civic-marriage-wise.
n.b. The City of Westminster wins hands down.
