A major project to repair Alexandra Palace’s North East Office Building – the last truly inaccessible area in the seven acre building – is nearing completion.
Work began in February this year to stabilise the structure of the former administrative building, thanks to a £550,000 grant from Historic England. Decayed brickwork and timber have been removed, as have historic roof lanterns (which will be carefully restored in the next phase of works). New timber floors, walls and roof coverings have been installed.
The scale and complexity of work, combined with discoveries that were not known at the start of the project – some internal walls were no longer in sound condition, for example – extended both the programme and the funds required; Historic England provided an additional grant of £195,000, and the project has taken a total of nine months.
With the block vacated since 1981, this work has allowed exploration of the unused and hidden area of the Palace. As team did this, there were a number of interesting finds:
A Lipton’s drinks bottle from circa 1878. The Alexandra Palace archive captures a picture of a Lipton’s advert on a tram outside the North East Office Building in the 1920s.
A BBC coffee cup with 1960s logo, no doubt used here when the North East Office Building was the home of the Open University production unit. The OU broadcast educational programmes from the Palace’s TV studios between 1971 and 1981.
A Codd* bottle from HD Rawlings, in Nassau Street, Fitzrovia, London – an early example of a carbonated drinks bottle, dating back 150 years. Rawlings was taken over by R Whites in the 1890s.
Finally…well, no one is quite sure what this tiny wooden shoe is?? If anyone out there knows, then please contact Alexandra Palace with your suggestions!
What next for the North East Office Building? Firstly, the repair work needs to be completed, something that is planned to happen before the end of the year. This will give the Ally Pally team the chance to regularly access the building, from which point the ambition is to explore how it can be brought back into public use. This is something that, as a charity, will require additional funding to realise.
The Office Building was used as far back as 1875, to house the ‘offices of the administrators’, a ticket office, porter’s facilities, costume room, and the Palace’s first Superintendent; and from 1970 serving as office space for the Open University. Its restoration is the next phase of a major restoration programme that saw the Palace’s Victorian Theatre successfully reopen in 2018 following 80 years of closure; alongside the transformation of the East Court, thanks to funding from the National Lottery Heritage Fund and Haringey Council.
