Former Hampton Wick Local Board offices and UDC office, Hampton Wick, London

Summary

Local Board offices, later the Urban District Council (UDC) office, 1884 by Richard T Elsam, Surveyor to the Board, in Jacobean revival manner. Dated 1863, commemorating the formation of Hampton Wick Local Board.

Description

MATERIALS
Stock brick, with terracotta facade, slate roofs.

PLAN
Three bays, three storeys and basement, comprising a council chamber at raised ground floor level and former offices and caretaker’s accommodation on the upper floors, which have been subdivided into small flats. Tall gable stack to south.

EXTERIOR
Asymmetrical facade with the entrance to the right hand bay reached by steps (now concrete) between solid masonry parapet walls with terracotta dressings.

Round-arched entrance between pilasters with lion’s head capitals, the frieze inscribed Hampton Wick UDC, the voussoir inscribed 1863. Door in two leaves has fielded lower panels and glazed upper panels, beneath a glazed segmental-headed overlight. Above, a continuous cornice supported to the left on a moulded bracket. Windows on the front elevation are metal-framed casements set into terracotta clad openings.

The ground floor window to the council chamber comprises a pair of two-light, ovolo-moulded, mullion and transom windows with metal framed casements and fixed lights with rectangular leaded panes, the upper lights with armorial glass; all set either side of a broad central panel which contains a pedimented clock face.

Upper floors are articulated by rusticated and panelled pilasters, also supporting deep moulded cornices; at second floor level a modillion cornice. Windows are arranged 2:3:2; the first floor has a central three-light mullion and transom window flanked by similar two-light windows, all with leaded upper lights and plain glazed main lights and each above a bolection moulded panel enriched with strapwork decoration. Second floor windows are two and three-light casements to the central and left bay, with rectangular leaded lights.

A tall shaped gable flanked by moulded obelisk finials has a shaped pediment with flared flanks, also crowned by a moulded obelisk finial. The central bay is defined by plain pilasters beneath a shallow cornice that frame a moulded bas-relief panel depicting a stag beneath a crown; a swagged garland to the pediment.

Plain rectangular semi-basement windows are set behind a balustraded parapet wall to the street frontage. Piers have moulded bases and fixings that supported lamp standards.

Aside from the pair of two-light mullion and transom terracotta-clad window openings to the council chamber, the rear is set out functionally with segmental headed timber sashes.

INTERIOR
Full depth council chamber in two bays. A classically informed and unusually intact room, the walls are enriched with fluted pilasters on tall moulded plinths within a deep dado and support a moulded cornice. Square-panelled ceiling on robustly mutule-like brackets, enriched with guttae.

The chimney breast is articulated by deeper pilasters, flanking a bolection moulded timber chimneypiece with a deep modillion cornice to the mantelshelf. The fireplace has deep red, tiled slips and a replaced grate with a beaten metal hood.

Windows, set back between enriched fluted pilasters, and set directly into ovolo-moulded terracotta openings, have metal framed casements with leaded lights. Upper lights have armorial glass panels, those to the rear inscribed: ‘The Urban District Council Hampton Wick MDCCCLXIII’ and ‘County of Middlesex East Saxons’.

In the council chamber, are four ornate, wall-mounted, brass light brackets.

Ground floor mahogany doors, two to the council chamber, of five moulded panels each in an eared architrave beneath a shallow bolection moulded frieze and moulded cornice.

Broad stair with a deep moulded skirting rising to first floor level above which the stair has been boxed in. The lowest flight of the balustrade has been boxed in or removed, above which it has a plain, square, oak newel, robust rectangular balusters and a moulded oak rail, some renewed in the 1960s. The first floor has moulded cornices. Front elevation windows, also set in ovolo-moulded terracotta openings, have shaped plates and catches. Angled fireplaces, with moulded chimneypieces, on first and second floors.

Basement stair has a square newel, stick balusters, shaped rail and ladder steps.

Alterations in the 1960s, which do not contribute to its special interest, included the insertion of a separate upper floor staircase.

History

Hampton Wick Local Board was set up in 1863, the date recorded on the building. The Local Board offices followed in 1884, designed by Richard T Elsam, Surveyor to the Board, and built by Mr Bonnell of Teddington. The terracotta roundel in the gable depicts the stag and crown that denote Hampton Wick, and it is said that the roundel was designed by Sir Thomas James Nelson. Nelson, appointed City Solicitor in 1862, latterly lived in Hampton Wick, but had gained his reputation and knighthood securing Epping Forest, where he was brought up, for the public in 1876. The Urban District Council (UDC) was set up in 1894, and some time thereafter, probably in the early 1900s, proposals for extending the offices were drawn up by the Surveyor J Dixon Horsfield, perhaps to provide waiting rooms indicated on the upper floors. The building later became the public library and in the 1960s the upper floors were converted to flats.

The building sits in the historic High Street, and when built stood next to Hampton Wick Junior School and Infants School, both to the north of the UDC building but since demolished. The school was enlarged in 1883/4 by the addition of the classroom adjacent to the offices, with which it shared a party wall. Early C20 photographs depict the close relationship of the group of buildings and early changes to the lamp standards mounted on the front parapet wall.

Reasons for Listing

Former Hampton Wick Local Board offices, later the UDC office, 1884, designed by Richard T Elsam, Surveyor to the Board, is listed for the following principal reasons:

* Architectural interest: exuberant Jacobean Revival exterior in terracotta, and classically treated council chamber, an expression of confident civic pride;
* Intactness and rarity: a remarkably complete council chamber, an increasingly rare survival at this level of local government;
* Historic interest: resonant evidence of late C19 administration and civic pride at local level.

External Links

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