County Hall

COUNTY HALL

The County Hall is situated on the South Bank in London besides Westminster Bridge and looks across to The Palace Of Westminster across the river Thames. It was the headquarters of the London County Council (L.C.C.) from 1912 and its successor, The Greater London Council (G.L.C.) from 1965 until it was disbanded in 1986. With an impressive façade of Portland Stone, the hall was built in the ‘Edwardian Baroque’ style and stands out from its mostly modernist neighbours, in an area that was heavily bombed during The Second World War.

The construction of County Hall was a particularly costly building project. A ‘Cross and Blackwell’ factory stood on the intended site and being only a dozen years into a 999 lease, a whopping £100,000 had to be paid to the makers of the world famous ‘Branston Pickle’ relish, to persuade them to vacate the site. In addition, £10,000 was spent on reclaiming land from the river, to bring the embankment in line with the neighbouring St Thomas’s Hospital. During the process, a third century Roman Thames riverboat was discovered and it is now on display in The Museum of London.

Plans for an even vaster edifice were scaled down in size after intensive debate between government and the chief architect W.E. Riley. King George V laid the foundation stone in 1912 and formally opened the building in 1922. However, at the official opening, the building was far from complete, with work having been halted during the First World War and construction duly continued over the following decades. ‘The North Block’ of County Hall was commissioned in the 1950's. Extraordinarily, the project was delayed after all ten firms tendered the identical sum of 50,238 pounds, 19 shillings and three pence, leading to a mass referral to the Monopolies Commission!

Expansion continued as late as 1974, with the ‘The Island Block’ annex. It was a truly perfect example of rotten ‘Brutalist’ architecture. Attached to the back of County Hall by a walkway, the bulk of the building was itself stranded within a busy roundabout. Within a meagre twelve years, it was empty and abandoned. The Island Block remained a wretched blot on the landscape until it was pulled down in 2006. On its destruction, the unrepentant architect, John Bancroft, declared, “I am absolutely devastated – I consider that it was a distinguished building.” The general public disagreed, in a nationwide poll it was voted the eleventh most ugly building in Britain.

The Labour Party had controlled the London County Council from 1934 and the political opposition complained that elections were one-sided because the L.C.C. only covered the mostly Labour voting inner London districts. After much debate and procedure, the metropolitan boundaries were extended at all four compass points. Thirty-two boroughs were formed including the more genteel suburban areas, swallowing up chunks of the surrounding counties. The first Greater London Council elections were held in 1964. Some argued that the G.L.C. was ‘created to be a Conservative poodle that turned into a mighty monster of the left.’ During its last five years, the G.L.C. was led by Ken Livingstone, commonly known as ‘Red Ken.’ In 1982 Ken Livingstone was voted runner up to the Pope in a BBC Radio 4’s Today programme’s ‘Man Of The Year.’ At the same time a national newspaper described him as ‘the most odious man in Britain.’ The Left’s strength at the G.L.C. contrasted with the power of the Conservative Party in Westminster. Margaret Thatcher finally disbanded the G.L.C. in 1986. In retrospect, historians generally agree that the vision of the G.L.C. was utopian and its achievement modest.

By 1993 County Hall had been sold to the Shirayama Shokusan Corporation, a private Japanese company, for sixty million pounds. Mr Makoto Okamoto is the family-run corporation's European head and an article published in The Independent Newspaper on 28 September 2005 reported that he had allegedly refused to allow war veterans into the County Hall building to pay respects at a war memorial listing more than a thousand L.C.C. staff who died in the two world wars. The resulting uproar forced the Japanese ambassador to intervene. The Independent likewise reported that in 1998, Mr Okamoto allegedly was accused of making sexist and racist comments at Lisa-Jane Statton, the manager of the London Aquarium, which currently rents the lower ground floors of County Hall. She told an employment tribunal that he called British women ‘bloody fat pigs’ with ‘legs like tree-trunks’, but withdrew the case after she was paid an estimated £100,000 to settle. Mr Okamoto’s wife is herself English. The Saatchi Gallery left County Hall after only three years, likewise after disputes with Mr Okamoto, who allegedly kicked a Gavin Turk sculpture. Another sculpture mysteriously had its nose removed and was spat on, when the gallery was closed to the public and very people had access to the space.

County Hall is now home to the aforementioned London Aquarium, the London Film Museum and two hotels, The Marriot and The Premier Inn. There are several restaurants and a number of one and two bedroomed apartments. Dali Universe moved out in 2010. County Hall is also a popular location for marriage ceremonies. The entire fourth and fifth floors have been left entirely empty since the G.L.C. was disbanded in 1986.

County Hall, Belvedere Road, London Se1 7PB. Waterloo and Westminster London Underground (Tube) stations.

London Underground Railway (Tube): Bond Street and Marble Arch 

Where to view County Hall and video clips of London

London in motion has some of the best London Stock Footage and London Library Footage with moving clips of many of the above mentioned places to see, are available to browse through by simply visiting the ‘County Hall’ category of this website.  New additions of London video clips are being frequently uploaded and further categories will be appearing over the coming months.