Shoreditch Town Hall
Styles Façade Solutions® (formerly Thomann-Hanry®) was instructed to deliver a public sector facade cleaning for Shoreditch Town Hall’s Portland stone exterior as part of 2021’s post-pandemic recovery. Situated on the busy Old Street, the 155-year-old façade had never been cleaned, leaving dirt, soot and pollution embedded in the carved stonework.
With events resuming within months, scaffolding was impractical. Our scaffold-free Façade Gommage process offered the ideal solution, using a truck-mounted hydraulic cabin to clean the building without erecting scaffolding, projecting fine Aluminium silicate powder to gently lift grime before reclaiming it in a closed-water system.
A four-person team cleaned the 1,500m² façade in just eight days, restoring the stonework’s original detail and glory.
Solutions provided
Styles Façade Solutions® prepares to undertake the first façade clean in over 155 years at Shoreditch Town Hall, London's Grade II listed landmark.
A CLEANING 155 YEARS IN THE MAKING
Shoreditch Town Hall started its life as the site of alms-houses known locally as Fuller’s Hospital. The original eastern section was designed in the Italianate style by Caesar Augustus Long and built in 1866 and was later extended in the Edwardian Baroque style by William G. Hunt at the turn of the 20th century.
Shoreditch Town Hall is among London’s finest examples of grand civic architecture. Adorned with its iconic statue of Progress, the building exemplifies the purposeful optimism of the era. Its “More light, more power” motto – carved beneath the Shoreditch crest – encapsulates this forward-looking ethos.
From its opening in 1866, the Town Hall was the hub of local democracy and civic life for over a century. Its status as a political focal point was underlined by the arrest there of suffragette Sylvia Pankhurst in 1913. The building ceased to be the local seat of government after the formation of the London Borough of Hackney in 1965.
The venue then became home to boxing matches and the legendary trance nightclub Whirl-Y-Gig. After a period of neglect, it passed into the ownership of the Shoreditch Town Hall Trust in 1997. Following an extensive restoration programme, it reopened in 2004 as a community, cultural and enterprise venue.
SCAFFOLD-FREE HERITAGE RESTORATION ON A BUSY TRANSPORT CORRIDOR
As part of the post-pandemic recovery in 2021, Styles Façade Solutions® was instructed to clean the imposing Portland stone façade of Shoreditch Town Hall. The site sits along Old Street, a busy main road with bus stops directly outside, and has the Windrush Overground Line alongside it.
The venue’s façade had never been cleaned in its 155-year history, so the build-up of dirt, soot, biofilm and atmospheric pollution from its busy urban environment had taken its toll on the intricately carved Portland stone façade. With the first post-lockdown events at the venue planned to start within a few months, avoiding invasive, costly, time-consuming scaffolding was paramount.
TRANSFORMING 1,500M2 OF PORTLAND STONE IN JUST 8 DAYS
Our innovative, scaffold-free Façade Gommage cleaning process provided the ideal solution for this public sector facade cleaning project, eliminating the need to envelope the venue in scaffolding for months on end. The system works from a self-contained truck-mounted hydraulic cabin that cleans the building's façade without erecting a single pole of scaffolding.
The system projects a fine powder of Aluminium silicate at a pressure of below 4 bar to gently erase surface dirt and grime from the masonry. This powder is then sucked back into the cabin and trapped in a closed-system curtain of water. The solid materials are then filtered out of the water and removed from the site at the end of each working day.
The expert team of four were able to clean the 1,500m2 Portland stone façade in only eight days. The impressive results revealed the detailing of the stone façade and sculptures in all their original glory.
“It has long been an ambition of ours to properly clean and give some attention to the façade of our much-loved landmark building, and so I’m delighted that we’re now able to start these works ahead of welcoming audiences back. The clean will no doubt have a transformative impact on the public’s perception of the Town Hall, and is a fitting and timely reminder of our presence and future ambition as we fully emerge from the horror of the last 12 months and continue to serve artistic and local communities in Shoreditch, Hackney and beyond.”
James Pidgeon, Director & Chief Executive of Shoreditch Town Hall
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