Calne Town Hall is a municipal building in The Strand,

Calne Calne () is a town and civil parish in Wiltshire, southwestern England,OS Explorer Map 156, Chippenham and Bradford-on-Avon Scale: 1:25 000.Publisher: Ordnance Survey A2 edition (2007). at the northwestern extremity of the North Wessex Downs h ...

Wiltshire Wiltshire (; abbreviated Wilts) is a historic and ceremonial county in South West England with an area of . It is landlocked and borders the counties of Dorset to the southwest, Somerset to the west, Hampshire to the southeast, Gloucestershire ...

, England. The town hall, which is the meeting place of Calne Town 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

The first town hall in Calne was established in 1829 when a corn store on Market Hill was converted to form a market house with a meeting room on the first floor for civic leaders. The room became the office of the new borough council when the area was designated a

municipal borough Municipal boroughs were a type of local government district which existed in England and Wales between 1835 and 1974, in Northern Ireland from 1840 to 1973 and in the Republic of Ireland from 1840 to 2002. Broadly similar structures existed in S ...

in 1835. In the early 1880s civic leaders decided to demolish the old market house and to create a dedicated town hall: the site selected in The Strand had been occupied by the old town mill. The new building, which was designed by Bryan Oliver in the

Gothic style Gothic or Gothics may refer to: People and languages *Goths or Gothic people, the ethnonym of a group of East Germanic tribes **Gothic language, an extinct East Germanic language spoken by the Goths **Crimean Gothic, the Gothic language spoken b ...

, was built in

limestone Limestone ( calcium carbonate ) is a type of carbonate sedimentary rock which is the main source of the material lime. It is composed mostly of the minerals calcite and aragonite, which are different crystal forms of . Limestone forms whe ...

rubble Rubble is broken stone, of irregular size, shape and texture; undressed especially as a filling-in. Rubble naturally found in the soil is known also as 'brash' (compare cornbrash)."Rubble" def. 2., "Brash n. 2. def. 1. ''Oxford English Dictionary ...

and was opened in 1886. The design involved an asymmetrical main frontage with five bays facing onto Cox's Hill; the left-hand bay featured a pair of three-light windows on the ground floor, a carved panel and pair of two-light windows on the first floor and a large gable containing a small three-light window above. The second bay featured a doorway on the ground floor, a nine-light window on the first floor and a

clock tower Clock towers are a specific type of structure which house a turret clock and have one or more clock faces on the upper exterior walls. Many clock towers are freestanding structures but they can also adjoin or be located on top of another buildi ...

(containing a quarter-chiming clock by John Smith of Derby) with a

pyramid A pyramid (from el, πυραμίς ') is a structure whose outer surfaces are triangular and converge to a single step at the top, making the shape roughly a pyramid in the geometric sense. The base of a pyramid can be trilateral, quadrilat ...

-shaped roof above. The third bay featured a carriageway with a three-light window above, while the two right-hand bays featured a combination of four-light and three-light windows with two smaller gables above. Internally, the principal rooms were a panelled council chamber on the left-hand side of the building, a public hall (subsequently referred to as the "Large Hall ") at the rear of the building and a corn exchange. The public hall was also used as a courthouse from an early stage.

King Edward VII Edward VII (Albert Edward; 9 November 1841 – 6 May 1910) was King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and Emperor of India, from 22 January 1901 until his death in 1910. The second child and eldest son of Queen Victoria a ...

and

Queen Alexandra Alexandra of Denmark (Alexandra Caroline Marie Charlotte Louise Julia; 1 December 1844 – 20 November 1925) was Queen of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions, and Empress of India, from 22 January 1901 to 6 May 1910 as the wife of King ...

visited the town and received an address from civic leaders in front of the town hall on 22 July 1907.Plaque on the front of the town hall A small building behind the town hall was home to the fire service until 1966 when it moved to Wenhill Heights. The building continued to serve as the headquarters of the Calne Borough Council for much of the 20th century but ceased to be the local seat of government after the enlarged North Wiltshire Council was formed in 1974. The town hall subsequently became the meeting place of Calne Town Council. In August 1986, a plaque was unveiled by the athlete,

Sydney Wooderson Sydney Charles Wooderson Order of the British Empire, MBE (30 August 1914 – 21 December 2006), dubbed "The Mighty Atom", was an England, English Track and field athletics, athlete whose peak career was in the 1930s and 1940s. He set the world ...

, on the town hall to commemorate the achievement of the local athlete, Walter Goodall George, who had broken the mile record in 1886. The

Prince of Wales Prince of Wales ( cy, Tywysog Cymru, ; la, Princeps Cambriae/Walliae) is a title traditionally given to the heir apparent to the English and later British throne. Prior to the conquest by Edward I in the 13th century, it was used by the rulers ...

called in at the town hall on his way to visit an environmental project at a local farm on 25 March 1988 and

Queen Elizabeth II Elizabeth II (Elizabeth Alexandra Mary; 21 April 1926 – 8 September 2022) was Queen of the United Kingdom and other Commonwealth realms from 6 February 1952 until Death and state funeral of Elizabeth II, her death in 2022. She was queen ...

entered the building and signed the visitors' book on 7 December 2001.Guidebook, p. 4

References

Sources

*{{cite book, url=https://calne.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/guide-to-calne-town-hall-final.pdf , title=A Guide to Calne Town Hall, publisher=Calne Town Council, access-date=12 January 2021 Government buildings completed in 1886 City and town halls in Wiltshire

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 ...

Grade II listed government buildings Grade II listed buildings in Wiltshire