Half Moon welcomes the Open House Festival

This September, Half Moon is offering people the opportunity to see our work from a different perspective when we take part in the Open House Festival, the capital’s largest celebration of special buildings and neighbourhoods. Now in its 30th year, the festival is a city-wide celebration of the architecture, landscapes and places that make London special. We’re proud to be part of this event as we’re lucky to be based in a very special Tower Hamlets building.

In 1864, the new offices of the Limehouse District Board of Works opened at 43 White Horse Road. The new building by Charles Dunch, Surveyor to the Board, had an ornate, Italianate stuccoed façade, that architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner described as featuring “a grossly decorated round arched entrance beneath a portico on massive festooned brackets”.

This beacon of civic virtue, along with the 19^th century houses of the nearby Mercer’s Estate (now part of the York Square Conservation Area), stood out in stark contrast to the clay-pipe factory, the charity school, the alms houses to the north and the East End tenement slums to the south in Ratcliff.

After the 1901 abolition of the Limehouse District Board of Works, this building became the office of the Stepney Public Health Department and, later still, the Tower Hamlets Housing Department. Most of the records from these times are, inevitably, prosaic technical reports on Sewers, Drains and other services. Nonetheless, exploring the building from its cellars to its roof-top views of the neighbourhood, one cannot help but breathe in the atmosphere, the shadows, echoes and ghosts of bygone ages.

The purchase of our home from Tower Hamlets in 2008 gave us the opportunity to undertake some much-needed work on our beautiful Victorian building. Our vision was to create a more accessible, environmentally friendly and welcoming venue, providing improved facilities for our users and ensuring Half Moon remains a vital resource and beacon theatre for young people.

From Thursday 15 to Saturday 17 September, we’ll will be running tours of our building and garden and opening up some of the Half Moon Theatre archive for you to look at. All the tours are FREE and there is no need to book in advance, but please check out the tour times as they vary from day to day.

Stephen Beeny is the Communications Manager at Half Moon.