Old Town Hall, Kensington

The building was commissioned to replace the mid-19th-century Kensington Vestry Hall in Kensington High Street, which had been designed by Benjamin Broadbridge in the Tudor style for the Parish of St Mary Abbots Kensington. After the vestry hall had become inadequate for their needs, civic leaders decided to procure a new town hall; the site chosen for the new building had previously been occupied by the Kensington National School. The new building, which was designed by Robert Walker in the Italianate style, was built by Braid and Co. on an adjacent site just to the east of the old vestry hall and was completed in 1880. Speakers in the post-war era included the leader of the Union…