Stanley Halls was built between 1903 and 1909 by the inventor and entrepreneur William Stanley as an entertainment venue for the community of South Norwood in South London.
Today, the building is home to Stanley Arts, one of the area’s premier arts and performance venues.
Who was William Stanley?
William Stanley was an inventor, manufacturer, and philanthropist born in Islington, London.
In 1854, Stanley set up his own business in Holborn, making mathematical and drawing instruments.
He invented the T-square, the panoptic stereoscope, and a straight-line dividing machine. The latter won first prize in the International Exhibition of 1862 and guaranteed his fortune.
Stanley moved his factory to South Norwood in the mid-1870s. The Stanley Works was located near Norwood Junction railway station and, by the 1880s, employed 80 local people to produce mathematical instruments.
By 1903, the firm was the largest of its kind in the world. It operated in South Norwood until 1926 when it moved to New Eltham.
The ‘eccentric’ architecture of Stanley Halls
With the money raised from his business, Stanley decided to build ‘a well-needed public hall’ for the local community.
Stanley himself designed Stanley Halls and its Technical School next door. The German ‘Gewerbeschulen’ trade schools inspired the Technical School, which was the first of its kind in England.
As an inventor, Stanley wasn’t interested in following any architectural blueprints.
The result is a building described by the architecture historian Nikolaus Pevsner as ‘one of the most eccentric efforts anywhere at a do-it-yourself freestyle.’
A history of protest and performance
Over the years, the Stanley Halls complex has been used for various educational and cultural events.
In 1912, ‘a spirited debate on Votes for Women’ took place where Alice Abadam (president of the National Women’s Suffrage Society) spoke in favour of women’s right to vote.
Early performances included the composers Samuel Coleridge-Taylor and William Hurlstone.
By the 1960s, singers Shirley Bassey, Matt Munro, and the jazz musician Johnny Dankworth had also taken to the stage at the Stanley Halls complex.
Stanley Arts
In 2007, the Technical School was taken over by the Harris Academy chain, but the future of the rest of the Stanley Halls complex was in doubt.
However, in 2015, the buildings were signed over to the Stanley People’s Initiative, a charity established to save the complex and find a new use.
At the start of 2021, Stanley Halls was rebranded as Stanley Arts with a return to the original intention of William Stanley: a hub for local entertainment, art, and culture.
True to its history, Stanley Arts particularly seeks to foreground under-represented voices, providing ethnic minority artists and LGBTQ+ creatives with a platform to reach out to audiences across South London and beyond.
[The] platforming of underrepresented voices is key to what our future in this building is and, in some senses, represents what Stanley was doing all that time back, 110 years ago.
Daniel Winder, Artistic Director and CEO at Stanley Arts
We have supported repairs to the building as part of our South Norwood High Street Heritage Action Zone.
Further reading
What a super video. Dr Dan Winder and his team at Stanley Arts have made a huge difference to the look and use of this extraordinary, quirky, lovable building erected by inventor and manufacturer William Stanley. I wish them all the best with their programmes in the future; they have firmly put South Norwood on the London cultural map. In the meantime, I encourage everyone to get down there, to Station Road outside Norwood Junction station, this coming Sunday 10th September 2023, for the Carnival of Invention presented by Stanley Arts, from 11.00 am – 5.00 pm. There will be fun and activities around the theme of invention for all the family. Check out the Bureau of Silly Ideas!