Bishop Auckland Town Hall is a municipal facility in the Market Place,

Bishop Auckland Bishop Auckland () is a market town and civil parish at the confluence of the River Wear and the River Gaunless in County Durham, northern England. It is northwest of Darlington and southwest of Durham. Much of the town's early history surro ...

Co Durham County Durham ( ), officially simply Durham,UK General Acts 1997 c. 23Lieutenancies Act 1997 Schedule 1(3). From legislation.gov.uk, retrieved 6 April 2022. is a ceremonial county in North East England.North East Assembly �About North East E ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

. It 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

The building, which was designed by John Philpott Jones 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 ...

for the Bishop Auckland Town Hall and Market Company, was financed by private issue of shares and officially opened on 28 October 1862. When it opened facilities included a large lecture hall capable of accommodating 800 people and a temperance hotel. The building held a prominent position in the town and dominated the area with its strong

mansard A mansard or mansard roof (also called a French roof or curb roof) is a four-sided gambrel-style hip roof characterised by two slopes on each of its sides, with the lower slope, punctured by dormer windows, at a steeper angle than the upper. The ...

pavilions, spires and associated ironwork. The mansard pavilions were an unusual feature imported from France which were copied a few years later by

Bellamy and Hardy Bellamy and Hardy was an architectural practice in Lincoln, England, that specialised particularly in the design of public buildings and non-conformist chapels. Pearson Bellamy had established his own architectural practice by 1845 and he entere ...

in their design for

Retford Town Hall Retford Town Hall is a municipal building in The Square, Retford, Nottinghamshire, England. The town hall, which was the meeting place of Retford Borough Council, is a grade II listed building. History Earlier buildings A moot hall was built i ...

. The building was acquired by the

local board of health Local boards or local boards of health were local authorities in urban areas of England and Wales from 1848 to 1894. They were formed in response to cholera epidemics and were given powers to control sewers, clean the streets, regulate environmenta ...

in 1888 and it became the headquarters of Bishop Auckland

Urban District Urban district may refer to: * District * Urban area * Quarter (urban subdivision) * Neighbourhood Specific subdivisions in some countries: * Urban districts of Denmark * Urban districts of Germany * Urban district (Great Britain and Ireland) (hist ...

council in 1894.

Sir Edward Elgar Sir Edward William Elgar, 1st Baronet, (; 2 June 1857 – 23 February 1934) was an English composer, many of whose works have entered the British and international classical concert repertoire. Among his best-known compositions are orchestr ...

visited the building on 2 December 1919 and conducted the Leeds Symphony Orchestra playing a series of pieces of his own work. After Bishop Auckland Urban District Council was abolished in 1974, the building was abandoned and then condemned for demolition in the 1980s; however, after a local campaign to save the building, it was fully restored in the early 1990s. The works included the conversion of the main assembly hall into a facility known as the Eden Theatre to commemorate a previous theatre of that name in Newgate Street which had been demolished in 1974. The changes also introduced a new

public library A public library is a library that is accessible by the general public and is usually funded from public sources, such as taxes. It is operated by librarians and library paraprofessionals, who are also Civil service, civil servants. There are ...

, an

art gallery An art gallery is a room or a building in which visual art is displayed. In Western cultures from the mid-15th century, a gallery was any long, narrow covered passage along a wall, first used in the sense of a place for art in the 1590s. The lon ...

, a tourist information centre and a café. The complex was officially re-opened in September 1993 and the restoration in the complex was recognised with a

Civic Trust Award The Civic Trust Awards scheme was established in 1959 to recognise outstanding architecture, planning and design in the built environment. As the longest standing built environment awards scheme in Europe, since 1959, more than 7000 projects have ...

in 1995. The art gallery went on to hold three exhibitions for mining artist Tom Lamb. The first was held in 1999 for his "Fading Memories" exhibition, then in 2004 for Lamb's "The Footprints Of My Years" exhibition and in 2008 the last exhibition called "My Mining Days" was held. The building closed for a further refurbishment involving a new layout to the art gallery and expected to cost £1.9 million in September 2019.

References

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External links

Bishop Auckland Town Hall
Grade II* listed buildings in County Durham Art museums and galleries in County Durham Theatres in County Durham

Town Hall In local government, a city hall, town hall, civic centre (in the UK or Australia), guildhall, or a municipal building (in the Philippines), is the chief administrative building of a city, town, or other municipality. It usually houses ...

City and town halls in County Durham Government buildings completed in 1862