Bellingham Town Hall is a municipal building in Front Street in

Bellingham, Northumberland Bellingham ( ) is a village and civil parish in Northumberland, to the north-west of Newcastle upon Tyne and is situated on the Hareshaw Burn at its confluence with the River North Tyne. Features Famous as a stopping point on the Pennine Way t ...

, England. The building, which is the meeting place of Bellingham Parish Council, is a Grade II

listed building In the United Kingdom, a listed building or listed structure is one that has been placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Historic Environment Scotland in Scotland, in Wales, and the Northern Irel ...

History

In the mid-19th century, the local community in Bellingham decided to raise money, through

public subscription Subscription refers to the process of investors signing up and committing to invest in a financial instrument, before the actual closing of the purchase. The term comes from the Latin word ''subscribere''. Historical Praenumeration An early form ...

, concerts and other local fundraising initiatives, for a local events venue. The site they chose was a place formerly known as Mug Hill where markets had once been held. The new building was designed in the

Gothic Revival style Gothic Revival (also referred to as Victorian Gothic, neo-Gothic, or Gothick) is an architectural movement that began in the late 1740s in England. The movement gained momentum and expanded in the first half of the 19th century, as increasingly ...

, built in

ashlar Ashlar () is finely dressed (cut, worked) stone, either an individual stone that has been worked until squared, or a structure built from such stones. Ashlar is the finest stone masonry unit, generally rectangular cuboid, mentioned by Vitruv ...

stone and was officially opened on 3 March 1862. The design involved a symmetrical main frontage with seven bays facing onto Front Street; the central bay featured a doorway flanked by

Tuscan order The Tuscan order (Latin ''Ordo Tuscanicus'' or ''Ordo Tuscanus'', with the meaning of Etruscan order) is one of the two classical orders developed by the Romans, the other being the composite order. It is influenced by the Doric order, but with u ...

pilasters supporting a

frieze In architecture, the frieze is the wide central section part of an entablature and may be plain in the Ionic or Doric order, or decorated with bas-reliefs. Paterae are also usually used to decorate friezes. Even when neither columns nor ...

and a

cornice In architecture, a cornice (from the Italian ''cornice'' meaning "ledge") is generally any horizontal decorative moulding that crowns a building or furniture element—for example, the cornice over a door or window, around the top edge of a ...

. Above the door, there was a panel bearing the coat of arms of the town and, above that, there was a wooden clock

turret Turret may refer to: * Turret (architecture), a small tower that projects above the wall of a building * Gun turret, a mechanism of a projectile-firing weapon * Objective turret, an indexable holder of multiple lenses in an optical microscope * Mi ...

with a

spire A spire is a tall, slender, pointed structure on top of a roof of a building or tower, especially at the summit of church steeples. A spire may have a square, circular, or polygonal plan, with a roughly conical or pyramidal shape. Spires are ...

and corner spirelets. The turret was donated by the main families of the area: the Armstrongs, the Charltons, the Dodds and the Milburns. The other bays were fenestrated by two-light

sash window A sash window or hung sash window is made of one or more movable panels, or "sashes". The individual sashes are traditionally paned window (architecture), paned windows, but can now contain an individual sheet (or sheets, in the case of double gla ...

s, although the window in the right hand bay was later replaced with a doorway. Internally, the principal room was the main hall. The architectural historian,

Nikolaus Pevsner Sir Nikolaus Bernhard Leon Pevsner (30 January 1902 – 18 August 1983) was a German-British art historian and architectural historian best known for his monumental 46-volume series of county-by-county guides, ''The Buildings of England'' (1 ...

, liked the design of the clock turret which he described as "playful". In the early 20th century, a local naval officer, Commander Edward Charlton, presented a

gingal The wall gun or wall piece was a type of smoothbore firearm used in the 16th through 18th centuries by defending forces to break the advance of enemy troops. Essentially, it was a scaled-up version of the army's standard infantry musket, operati ...

to the parish council which was duly placed outside the town hall: he had captured it during an attack on the northwest Taku Fort while serving on the

cruiser A cruiser is a type of warship. Modern cruisers are generally the largest ships in a fleet after aircraft carriers and amphibious assault ships, and can usually perform several roles. The term "cruiser", which has been in use for several hu ...

, HMS ''Orlando'', in June 1900 during the

Boxer Rebellion The Boxer Rebellion, also known as the Boxer Uprising, the Boxer Insurrection, or the Yihetuan Movement, was an anti-foreign, anti-colonial, and anti-Christian uprising in China between 1899 and 1901, towards the end of the Qing dynasty, by ...

. A memorial, in the form of a fountain sheltering a figure of a soldier, which was designed to commemorate the lives of local service personnel who died in the

Second Boer War The Second Boer War ( af, Tweede Vryheidsoorlog, , 11 October 189931 May 1902), also known as the Boer War, the Anglo–Boer War, or the South African War, was a conflict fought between the British Empire and the two Boer Republics (the Sout ...

was initially unveiled at the cross roads in the middle of Bellingham in 1902 but later relocated to a site just to the northeast of the town hall. In the 1960s, the town hall accommodated a cinema which was managed by the town hall committee and, in 1964, the

rock band A rock band or pop band is a small musical ensemble that performs rock music, pop music, or a related genre. A four-piece band is the most common configuration in rock and pop music. In the early years, the configuration was typically two guita ...

, ''

The Animals The Animals (also billed as Eric Burdon and the Animals) are an English rock band, formed in Newcastle upon Tyne in the early 1960s. The band moved to London upon finding fame in 1964. The Animals were known for their gritty, bluesy sound and ...

'', performed their

folk rock Folk rock is a hybrid music genre that combines the elements of folk and rock music, which arose in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom in the mid-1960s. In the U.S., folk rock emerged from the folk music revival. Performers suc ...

hit, ''

The House of the Rising Sun "The House of the Rising Sun" is a traditional folk music, folk song, sometimes called "Rising Sun Blues". It tells of a person's life gone wrong in the city of New Orleans. Many versions also urge a sibling or parents and children to avoid th ...

'', for the first time at the town hall. The building also continued to serve as the meeting place of the parish council into the 21st century, as well as being the location of the local community library. Following the disruption to power supplies caused by

Storm Arwen Storm Arwen was a powerful extratropical cyclone that was part of the 2021–22 European windstorm season. It affected the United Kingdom, Ireland and France, bringing strong winds and snow. Storm Arwen caused at least three fatalities and wides ...

in November 2021, a meeting was held with residents at the town hall to review the response and it was subsequently agreed that the town hall would be made available as a refuge for residents in case of future disruption caused by storms.

References

{{reflist Government buildings completed in 1862 City and town halls in Northumberland Bellingham, Northumberland Grade II listed buildings in Northumberland