The Marylebone Town Hall complex includes the Westminster Register Office, the council chamber, and an educational facility.
The building had been commissioned to replace the old courthouse at the south end of Marylebone Lane. This dated in part to the 18th century. After St Marylebone became a metropolitan borough in 1900, civic leaders decided to procure a new town hall. The site selected had been occupied by a row of residential properties.
The new building was designed by Sir Edwin Cooper in the ’Edwardian Graeco-Roman classicist’ style. After a pause caused by the First World War, it was officially opened on 27 March 1920. The design involved a symmetrical main frontage with 13 bays and a colonnaded tower on the roof.
A public library, also designed by Cooper, was built next to the town hall in 1939.
The town hall ceased to be the local seat of government when the enlarged City of Westminster was formed in 1965.
In its continuing role as the Westminster Register Office, marriages performed here included Sir Paul McCartney to Linda Eastman (1969), Cilla Black to Bobby Willis (also 1969), and Ringo Starr to Barbara Bach (1981), Melanie Griffith to Antonio Banderas (1996), Liam Gallagher to Patsy Kensit (1997) and Liam Gallagher to Nicole Appleton in February 2008.
The London Business School acquired the town hall in November 2012.
