The Old Town Hall is a former town hall in

Burslem Burslem ( ) is one of the six towns that along with Hanley, Tunstall, Fenton, Longton and Stoke-upon-Trent form part of the city of Stoke-on-Trent in Staffordshire, England. It is often referred to as the "mother town" of Stoke on Trent. T ...

, in

Staffordshire Staffordshire (; postal abbreviation Staffs.) is a landlocked county in the West Midlands region of England. It borders Cheshire to the northwest, Derbyshire and Leicestershire to the east, Warwickshire to the southeast, the West Midlands Cou ...

, England. It is in the Market Place, in the centre of the town. 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 ...

, listed on 2 October 1951.

History

The first town hall in the town, erected in the centre of the Market Place in 1761, was a rectangular two-storey building with open arches on the ground floor, a meeting hall on the first floor and a clock tower with a

cupola In architecture, a cupola () is a relatively small, most often dome-like, tall structure on top of a building. Often used to provide a lookout or to admit light and air, it usually crowns a larger roof or dome. The word derives, via Italian, from ...

on top. It was demolished to make way for the second town hall which was built on the same site. The second town hall, now referred to as the "Old Town Hall", which was designed by G. T. Robinson of

Wolverhampton Wolverhampton () is a city, metropolitan borough and administrative centre in the West Midlands, England. The population size has increased by 5.7%, from around 249,500 in 2011 to 263,700 in 2021. People from the city are called "Wulfrunian ...

in the

Baroque style The Baroque (, ; ) is a style of architecture, music, dance, painting, sculpture, poetry, and other arts that flourished in Europe from the early 17th century until the 1750s. In the territories of the Spanish and Portuguese empires including t ...

, was built between 1854 and 1857. It was designed with paired Corinthian

pilaster In classical architecture Classical architecture usually denotes architecture which is more or less consciously derived from the principles of Greek and Roman architecture of classical antiquity, or sometimes even more specifically, from the ...

s for the height of the upper storey, above which 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 ...

surmounted by

acroteria An acroterion, acroterium, or akroteria is an architectural ornament placed on a flat pedestal called the ''acroter'' or plinth, and mounted at the apex or corner of the pediment of a building in the classical style. An acroterion placed at th ...

was placed. At the west end a projecting

portico A portico is a porch leading to the entrance of a building, or extended as a colonnade, with a roof structure over a walkway, supported by columns or enclosed by walls. This idea was widely used in ancient Greece and has influenced many cult ...

with arched entrances, was erected above which

Corinthian column The Corinthian order (Greek: Κορινθιακός ρυθμός, Latin: ''Ordo Corinthius'') is the last developed of the three principal classical orders of Ancient Greek architecture and Roman architecture. The other two are the Doric order ...

s were placed; above these,

caryatid A caryatid ( or or ; grc, Καρυᾶτις, pl. ) is a sculpted female figure serving as an architectural support taking the place of a column or a pillar supporting an entablature on her head. The Greek term ''karyatides'' literally means "ma ...

s supported an octagonal clock turret and a gilded angel

finial A finial (from '' la, finis'', end) or hip-knob is an element marking the top or end of some object, often formed to be a decorative feature. In architecture, it is a small decorative device, employed to emphasize the Apex (geometry), apex of a d ...

. The town hall became the headquarters of the new borough of Burslem in 1878 but it ceased to be the local seat of government when the

Federation of Stoke-on-Trent The federation of Stoke-on-Trent was the 1910 amalgamation of the six Staffordshire Potteries towns of Burslem, Tunstall, Stoke-upon-Trent, Hanley, Fenton and Longton into the single county borough of Stoke-on-Trent. An anomaly in the histor ...

was formed in March 1910. The old town hall was used as a public library for much of the 20th century. It was used for scenes in the film ''

The Card ''The Card'' is a comic novel written by Arnold Bennett in 1911 (entitled ''Denry the Audacious'' in the American edition). It was later made into a 1952 movie, starring Alec Guinness and Petula Clark. Like much of Bennett's best work, it is ...

'' starring

Alec Guinness Sir Alec Guinness (born Alec Guinness de Cuffe; 2 April 1914 – 5 August 2000) was an English actor. After an early career on the stage, Guinness was featured in several of the Ealing comedies, including ''Kind Hearts and Coronets'' (194 ...

in 1952, and although there were proposals to demolish it in the 1960s, it survived and had become a recreation centre by the 1990s. The gilded angel was restored and re-gilded by Bailey International Steeplejacks in

Macclesfield Macclesfield is a market town and civil parish in the unitary authority of Cheshire East in Cheshire, England. It is located on the River Bollin in the east of the county, on the edge of the Cheshire Plain, with Macclesfield Forest to its east ...

in December 2000. From 2003 the building housed Ceramica, a visitor centre showing the artistic and industrial heritage of the Potteries. The project was funded by the

Millennium Commission The Millennium Commission, a United Kingdom public body, was set up to celebrate the turn of the millennium. It used funding raised through the UK National Lottery to assist communities in marking the close of the second millennium and celebra ...

. Part of the budget had to be spent in dealing with dry rot found in the building. The exhibition attracted fewer visitors than anticipated, and after Stoke-on-Trent City Council withdrew funding for day-to-day running, it closed in March 2011. The building remained empty until 2015, when the modern extension built as part of the Ceramica exhibition was demolished and the Old Town Hall was converted into a

sixth form college A sixth form college is an educational institution, where students aged 16 to 19 typically study for advanced school-level qualifications, such as A Levels, Business and Technology Education Council (BTEC) and the International Baccalaureate Di ...

of Haywood Academy, a project sponsored by Steelite International.

Notes

References

{{Stoke-on-Trent Buildings and structures in Stoke-on-Trent Grade II* listed buildings in Staffordshire City and town halls in Staffordshire Former seats of local government Government buildings completed in 1857