Canning Town: Former public hall

Image: © Nigel Cox Taken: 29 Aug 2019

The hall was built between 1892 and 1894 to provide a public meeting space and to administer council business in the southern part of the former Borough of West Ham, where the population had expanded rapidly in the late 19th Century. It was not the Borough Town Hall which was in Stratford. When East Ham and West Ham merged to become Newham Borough Council in 1965, the public hall became an adult education institute. By 1989 the hall had been abandoned, but was restored and revived by a local charity, which from 1993 ran it as a community centre; they remain the long leaseholders of the building. The public hall is associated with various prominent socialists, including Keir Hardie, Bertrand Russell and Sylvia Pankhurst, who all spoke here. Along with the adjacent Image it is a Grade II Listed Building, the two forming a handsome pair of municipal buildings, Italianate in style with plentiful carved stonework and decorative detail.

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