I NEVER thought I would live to see it, but a fever of community spirit has gripped Crouch End. This once un-chic area of North London, latterly transformed by the usual means (house price inflation, loft apartments, Starbucks) into a desirable quarter, is united in its determination to reclaim the old, semi-abandoned Hornsey Town Hall.

Town hall: do these words sink the heart? Go to a place like Henley-on-Thames, and you envy the unchanging, almost smug air of civic pride that its charming town hall bestows. Every French and Spanish town has its mairie or ayuntamiento, usually with a pretty square in front where you can sit and take photographs. But the English town hall suggests local government officialdom, small-minded self-importance, watch committees, long-winded argy-bargy and decisions that enrage the citizenry.

We did The Pied Piper of Hamelin as a school play when I was six, so I learnt early about the short-sighted decisions of local corporations, and the people’s feelings about them: “Tis clear,” cried they, “our mayor’s a noddy!” Later, as a cub reporter, I witnessed much noddyism in South Shields town hall — an imposing, majestic building, proud symbol of a once prosperous borough. If the rock-solid Labour council went astray, the Shields Gazette, in a column called “Scrutiny” (by “Vigilant” — a veteran scribe with fob-watch and gold-topped cane) would thunder about it.

But what use is a town hall, when a borough no longer exists? Hornsey, an old London borough, was long ago swallowed up in the hideous hybrid Haringey, based elsewhere. Hornsey Town Hall, largely empty for two decades now, was built in 1931-33, and could not honestly be called charming. Its architect believed that buildings should be unadorned. But it’s got heritage: it has a Grade II* listing, and an Art Deco auditorium seating 900, an erstwhile venue for orchestral and pop concerts and Christmas pantos. Haringey Council now wants to lease the entire town hall complex to a commercial developer who can build high-density housing in the car park.

A group of local residents called Crouch End for People (CEFP), rich in professional expertise and vision, has worked tirelessly to propose an alternative. This is a Hornsey Town Hall Trust, to reinstate the theatre and (working with the council, but not requiring its money) open up the building as a cultural centre for concerts, choirs, dance companies and public meetings, with rehearsal rooms, design workshops, bookshop, café, spaces for children and old people. Last Thursday night they held an impressive public meeting in our parish church. Every pew was full, standing room only — a rare sight. (If only the town hall were habitable, we could have gathered there.) More than 700 residents came and many spoke, highly articulately. Our MP, Barbara Roche, declared from the chair: “Never let anyone say community politics is dead.”

The CEFP plan is meticulously designed and sustainably costed: it has already got serious offers from three independent cinemas. It will reclaim the car park (vital to the enterprise), and “regenerate the piazza in continental style”.

This is crucial. The square in front is already a classic village green, with an old chestnut tree in the middle. If this were France, it would be ringed by outdoor cafés, market stalls, bandstand, boules. As it is, the grass is fenced off, the paved area is a skateboarders’ paradise and the benches are taken over by winos and squalid overflowing litter bins.

In postcode terms I don’t live in Crouch End, N8; we are in N6, which is posh Highgate; but the shops we use and love are in Crouch End. When we arrived here 23 years ago, it was a terminally sad sort of place. Now it’s a yuppie magnet (ever since Bob Dylan was rumoured to be moving in) awash with the familiar indicators: gyms and cyber-cafés and M&S Simply Food. Apartment blocks are being carved out of every available corner. We don’t need another one.

Annie Miles, a local actress, spoke for all, to loud applause: “We think Haringey Council have had the town hall long enough. They have left us a town hall to be ashamed of. How can we entrust this community treasure in the hands of the very same council which has left it to rot for 30 years? We want it back.”

Councillor Charles Adje assured us that Haringey Council welcomed all views, that the final decision has been deferred while the people’s voice is heard; that they aim to “meet community aspirations”. They know now what this community aspires to. We want to use the bloody place. We want to see it functioning, with events and facilities attracting people from all over North London and beyond. We want the space in front to be welcoming, not an embarrassing eyesore.

Next Saturday afternoon, May 8, people will be able to see inside Hornsey Town Hall in organised tours (though we may not be shown the grand piano, ruined by Haringey’s neglect of the leaking roof.) Out in the piazza there will be bands, stalls, cafés, Covent Garden-style entertainers, local celebs (Jack Ellis of Bad Girls, and the chap who shot Shaun of The Dead in these very streets) and petitions to sign.

It’s a cliché that we Londoners don’t know our neighbours. Most of us came here from elsewhere, and we lack the mechanisms of neighbourliness: people commute into town, the population shifts, nobody pops in uninvited. But other London boroughs, such as Hampstead, have reclaimed their disused town halls by their own determination. Anything is possible when a community stands up to be counted.





DISCORD, NOT HARMONY



YESTERDAY on Radio 4’s Today, Denis Healey spoke about Margaret Thatcher as if she were dead: “She was a very odd woman. Had no interest outside politics so when that was gone, her human life ended.” As Iain Duncan Smith, the next speaker, said, Healey was “characteristically ungenerous”. By contrast, Carol Thatcher on Woman’s Hour championed her mother, vividly describing how she would tidy up piles of paper “like a one-woman shredder” and, always ready to be on show, absolutely never flopped around at home in a tracksuit. “Her place in the history books is assured,” declared the good daughter Carol in ringingly Thatcheresque, brow-beating tones.