Open House Festival

Isleworth Public Hall

civic

S. Woodbridge, 1863

South Street, Isleworth, TW7 7BG

Well-executed and colourfully detailed example of Victorian reading and vestry rooms (1863) with added public hall by S. Woodridge 1887. Beautiful details inside and out.

Getting there

Train

Isleworth

Bus

267

Access

Facilities

Accessibility notes

There is a lift

About

Official List Entry

THE EVENT-

An Illustrated talk from 10.30 – 11.30 and exhibition explores
The Centenary of the A4 Great West Road
Close 12.30

Friends of IPH will provide light refreshments (tea/coffee/biscuits/cakes)

James Marshall is the author of a new history of the A4 Great West Road and his well illustrated talk will reveal the history of this important gateway into London for the road's centenary year.

Constructed across a landscape of market gardeners fields and orchards, and opened by King George V, in May 1925, the road became a catalyst for the rapid suburban development of Heston, Hounslow and Isleworth. And it's 'golden mile' to the west of Chiswick Roundabout became a corridor of inter war, Art Deco by-pass factories, of which J.B. Priestly, on his English Journey, in 1933, wrote: "Being new (the Great West Road) did not look English. We might have suddenly rolled into California.

Copies of James’s book will be available for sale at this event, £25 cash.

THE BUILDING ITSELF-
Reading Room, 1863; public hall added 1887-8, by S Woodbridge; C20 alterations.

Yellow stock brick in English bond with coated Welsh slate roofs and brick stacks. The 1863 block, at the front, is of 2 storeys, 3 x 1 bays, and is decoratively treated with a blue-brick plinth with off-sets; red brick to bands and to diaper-work between floors and to parapet; white herring-bone brick tympana to upper windows; and chamfered ashlar dressings to door, windows and verges.

Windows, of 3 lights to ground floor and 2 Caernarvon-arched lights to 1st floor, have mullions, transoms and horizontal glazing bars. Entrance on left has flight of 4 stone steps, half-glazed double-doors and 3-pane over-light. 1st floor: panels flanking windows have blue-brick offset bases and stepped cogged heads; windows are set under pointed arches which rise above parapet into gablets with crested ridge tiles; continuous hoodmould.

Parapet and raised verges with flat coping. Returns in same style, right return having a 3-light window to each floor and marble date stone recording the building of the extension; left return one 2-light window to 1st floor.

The 1887 rear block is of 2 tall storeys and 4 bays and is linked to the front block by a lower bay with entrance at each side. The 1887 work is plainer. Openings have segmental red-brick arches. The windows are large 4-pane sashes, paired on the ground-floor. On the left (west) side, 2 doors take the place of windows, and give direct access to meeting rooms; two corbelled lateral stacks. Roof half-hipped to rear.

INTERIOR: 1863 block: entrance hall has colourful tessellated floor; marble Boer War memorial comprising decorative, classically-treated, corniced, plaque with pointed-arched recess inscribed with names; wide cantilevered stone stair with open treads, decorative cast-iron balusters, panelled wooden newels and moulded wooden handrail. Panelled doors. Reading room, on ground floor, has dado rail and simply-moulded fireplace.

Vestry Hall on 1st floor has bolection-moulded fireplace and waggon-vaulted roof with exposed rafters. 1887 block has panelled doors; simple fireplaces; back-stair with wooden balusters, alternately plain and moulded; 1st-floor hall with stage, dado rail, cornice, chamfered principal rafters and collars, under-boarded roof.

This is a well-executed and colourfully-detailed example of a mid-C19 Reading Room which survives in a little-altered condition.

Online presence

hounslowconnect.com/services/venue-for-hire-isleworth-public-hall

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