Clacton Town Hall is a municipal building in Station Road,

Clacton-on-Sea Clacton-on-Sea is a seaside town in the Tendring District in the county of Essex, England. It is located on the Tendring Peninsula and is the largest settlement in the Tendring District with a population of 56,874 (2016). The town is situated a ...

Essex Essex () is a county in the East of England. One of the home counties, it borders Suffolk and Cambridgeshire to the north, the North Sea to the east, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent across the estuary of the River Thames to the south, and G ...

, England. The town hall, which is the headquarters of

Tendring District Council Tendring is a village and civil parish in Essex. It gives its name to the Tendring District and before that the Tendring Hundred. Its name was given to the larger groupings because it was at the centre, not because it was larger than the other ...

, 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

Following population growth, largely associated with the tourism industry, Clacton-on-Sea was designated an

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 ...

in 1894. The new council established its offices on the first floor of a building on the corner of Rosemary Road and the High Street, which had been designed in the Victorian style and completed in 1894. The ground floor was occupied by a bank and there was a theatre known as the Operetta House at the back of the building. In the early 1920s, civic leaders decided to procure a dedicated town hall: the site they selected on the west side of Station Road had been occupied by a potato field. Two former army buildings were acquired in an adjacent field in 1923 for use as temporary council offices while preparatory work was put underway. Construction of the new building started in 1928. It was designed by Sir Alfred Brumwell Thomas in the Neo-Georgian style, was built in brown brick with stone dressings and was officially opened by

Prince Arthur of Connaught Prince Arthur of Connaught (Arthur Frederick Patrick Albert; 13 January 1883 – 12 September 1938) was a British military officer and a grandson of Queen Victoria. He served as Governor-General of the Union of South Africa from 20 November 1920 ...

on 14 April 1931. The design of the new building involved a symmetrical main frontage with fifteen bays facing onto the Station Road; the central section of three bays, which slightly projected forward, featured a full-height

tetrastyle 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 ...

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

composite order The Composite order is a mixed order, combining the volutes of the Ionic order capital with the acanthus leaves of the Corinthian order.Henig, Martin (ed.), ''A Handbook of Roman Art'', p. 50, Phaidon, 1983, In many versions the composite o ...

columns flanked by

Doric order The Doric order was one of the three orders of ancient Greek and later Roman architecture; the other two canonical orders were the Ionic and the Corinthian. The Doric is most easily recognized by the simple circular capitals at the top of col ...

piers Piers may refer to: * Pier, a raised structure over a body of water * Pier (architecture), an architectural support * Piers (name), a given name and surname (including lists of people with the name) * Piers baronets, two titles, in the baronetages ...

supporting an

entablature An entablature (; nativization of Italian , from "in" and "table") is the superstructure of moldings and bands which lies horizontally above columns, resting on their capitals. Entablatures are major elements of classical architecture, and ...

bearing the words "Clacton Town Hall" and a

pediment Pediments are gables, usually of a triangular shape. Pediments are placed above the horizontal structure of the lintel, or entablature, if supported by columns. Pediments can contain an overdoor and are usually topped by hood moulds. A pedimen ...

above. The carvings in the tympanum consisted of a

wreath A wreath () is an assortment of flowers, leaves, fruits, twigs, or various materials that is constructed to form a circle . In English-speaking countries, wreaths are used typically as household ornaments, most commonly as an Advent and Chri ...

flanked by a pair of swags. There were three archways with keystones behind the portico, each with a carved swag above. The design of the two wings, each of six bays, involved end bays which slightly projected forward as

pavilion In architecture, ''pavilion'' has several meanings: * It may be a subsidiary building that is either positioned separately or as an attachment to a main building. Often it is associated with pleasure. In palaces and traditional mansions of Asia ...

s and featured

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 on the ground floor with

Diocletian window Diocletian windows, also called thermal windows, are large semicircular windows characteristic of the enormous public baths (''thermae'') of Ancient Rome. They have been revived on a limited basis by some classical revivalist architects in more m ...

s above. The other bays in the wings contained sash windows on the ground floor and

dormer A dormer is a roofed structure, often containing a window, that projects vertically beyond the plane of a pitched roof. A dormer window (also called ''dormer'') is a form of roof window. Dormers are commonly used to increase the usable space ...

windows at attic level. Internally, the principal rooms included a theatre, known as the Princes Theatre in honour of Prince Arthur, with a

proscenium arch A proscenium ( grc-gre, προσκήνιον, ) is the metaphorical vertical plane of space in a theatre, usually surrounded on the top and sides by a physical proscenium arch (whether or not truly "arched") and on the bottom by the stage floor ...

at the rear of the building; the other main rooms included the council chamber in the south wing and the library in the north wing. The town hall continued to serve as the local seat of government after the enlarged

was formed in 1974. The 21st century saw the theatre becoming an approved venue for weddings and civil partnerships. It also became a professional boxing venue in 2019, after an interval of some 80 years, and was declared Venue of the Year by the British and Irish Boxing Authority in January 2020. In January 2021, planning consent was given for the council to restore one of the main committee rooms, which had been used in recent years as a Housing Department reception area. Works of art in the town hall include a painting by the artist, Lodewijk Johannes Kleijn, depicting a Dutch skating scene.

References

{{reflist Government buildings completed in 1931 City and town halls in Essex Clacton-on-Sea Grade II listed buildings in Essex