Staines Town Hall, Market Square, Staines
Planning Application Numbers: 16/01197/FUL & 16/01198 for LBC.
Proposal: Change of Use from a pub/restaurant use (Class A3/A4) to 14 residential units, comprising 2 studio flats, 7 no. 1 bed flats and 5 no. 2 bed flats with underground car park and associated alterations.
Comments:
Staines Town Society, in common with many residents, would prefer the Town Hall to be in community use, but we have felt that a good residential conversion would be better than leaving it to rot away.
To our surprise and pleasure this appears to be an extremely good residential conversion, respecting the characteristic features of the building and retaining almost all the originals. The detailed list in the Heritage Statement of what will be retained and what removed shows an admirable attention to detail, and the duplex units making full use of the big windows are most ingenious.
We commend the proposal to open up the blind arches on the river frontage, and hope this means that any development behind the Town Hall will be restricted to one storey. However we wonder if there are any consequences of splitting the parcel of land in this way – are the Fire Station and the ex-Day Centre space not part of the curtilage of the Town Hall?
We believe that the white-painted band of Doulton tiles going round the exterior at about eye-level used to be red and green, though we have not been able to find an image to prove this. As the architect clearly wants to get the details just right, s/he might like to investigate this point.
There will be a parking deficit, but we agree that this is unavoidable to protect the structure.
During its years as an Arts Centre the building subsided sufficiently to break the tell-tales in the basement. We were told that the back of the Town Hall rests on a gravel island and the front rests on mud. Presumably the site engineers will be aware of this.
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