Woolwich’s Old Town Hall set to become artists’ studios

Woolwich’s Old Town Hall is set to be turned into artists’ studios, two years after it was renovated as part of a £17.1 million project to rejuvenate the town centre.

The building in Calderwood Street, which dates back to 1842 and is one of London’s oldest surviving local government buildings, is set to be leased to Second Floor Studios & Arts at a discount.

If the deal goes ahead, it would mark Second Floor’s return to Woolwich: the organisation began life in what is now Thames-Side Studios, near the Thames Barrier, in 2010 before moving to Deptford six years later. 

The organisation now has two studio complexes in Deptford as well as one at Wembley Park and another in Sevenoaks.

Second Floor would take over two floors of the Old Town Hall, a training room in the Old Library and a yard between the two, and a lift would be built to improve accessibility.

One of Second Floor’s objectives would be to have 30 per cent of tenants coming from Woolwich – defined roughly as the Woolwich Arsenal, Woolwich Common and Woolwich Dockyard council wards – while there would also be at least one open studios event each year.

Before the building was refurbished, it had been used by Citizens Advice and organisations supported by the council. 

Two years ago The Greenwich Wire reported how a senior citizens’ drop-in centre had been thrown out of its rent-free accommodation in the Old Town Hall to make way for the redevelopment. The Indian Cultural Centre, which had been based there since 1988, had to move out in 2019 because of a leaky roof, and has struggled to find a permanent base since then.

The council had always planned for the Old Town Hall to become “creative workspace” as part of the Future High Streets Fund programme, paid for by government levelling-up money, although choosing artists’ studios may surprise some who have struggled to find general affordable workspace in Woolwich.

But the decision follows the long-expected departure of the SET artists’ studios from Riverside House, an old council building which is being redeveloped into student accommodation and a hotel.

The Old Town Hall was set up by the Woolwich town commissioners, an early form of local government. After ten local boards and vestries merged in 1900 to form the old Metropolitan Borough of Woolwich, the new organisation moved to Wellington Street three years later, where the current Greenwich Council is still based. 

Details of the proposed deal are on the Greenwich Council website.

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