Congleton Town Hall is a municipal building in the High Street,

Congleton Congleton is a town and civil parish in the unitary authority of Cheshire East in Cheshire, England. The town is by the River Dane, south of Manchester and north of Stoke on Trent. At the 2011 Census, it had a population of 26,482. Top ...

Cheshire Cheshire ( ) is a ceremonial and historic county in North West England, bordered by Wales to the west, Merseyside and Greater Manchester to the north, Derbyshire to the east, and Staffordshire and Shropshire to the south. Cheshire's county t ...

, England. The town hall, which is the meeting place of Congleton Town Council, is a grade II* listed building.

History

The first town hall on the site was a half-timbered, black and white structure referred to as the "moot hall": it included a lock-up and a courtroom and was completed in the late 15th century. This structure was replaced by a second building on the same site referred to as the "guildhall"; it was designed in the neoclassical style with a colonnade, a lock-up and a courtroom and was completed in 1804. It was expanded, as a gift from Sir Edmund Antrobus, 1st Baronet, to create a market hall and an assembly room in 1823. After the second town hall became inadequate, civic leaders decided to procure a third town hall on the site. The third building was the subject of a design competition which was assessed by

Alfred Waterhouse Alfred Waterhouse (19 July 1830 – 22 August 1905) was an English architect, particularly associated with the Victorian Gothic Revival architecture, although he designed using other architectural styles as well. He is perhaps best known f ...

and won by Edward William Godwin. Construction started in 1864. It was designed in the Gothic style, built by a Mr Burkitt of Wolverhampton at a cost of £8,000, and was officially opened on 11 July 1866. The design involved a symmetrical main frontage with seven bays facing onto the High Street; the central bay featured an arched doorway on the ground floor with a two-stage high

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 ...

with a pyramid-shaped roof above; there was a row of thirty-three shields and eight round headed windows flanked by

colonette A colonnette is a small slender column, usually decorative, which supports a beam or lintel. Colonettes have also been used to refer to a feature of furnishings such as a dressing table and case clock, and even studied by archeologists in Roman ce ...

s forming an arcade on the first floor and there were

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 on either side of the clock tower at attic level. The front elevation also featured a statue of Henry de Lacy, Earl of Lincoln (on the right), who granted the town a charter in 1272, and of King Edward I (on the left), who granted the town the right to hold markets in 1274, and a statue of Queen Victoria (on the clock tower). Internally, the principal rooms were a double-height main hall with a

hammerbeam roof A hammerbeam roof is a decorative, open timber roof truss typical of English Gothic architecture and has been called "...the most spectacular endeavour of the English Medieval carpenter". They are traditionally timber framed, using short beams pr ...

, a courtroom and a library. The town hall continued to serve as the headquarters of Congleton Urban District Council but ceased to be the local seat of government after the enlarged

Congleton Borough Council Congleton is a town and civil parish in the unitary authority of Cheshire East in Cheshire, England. The town is by the River Dane, south of Manchester and north of Stoke on Trent. At the 2011 Census, it had a population of 26,482. Topon ...

, which had been formed in 1974, relocated to Westfields in Sandbach. An extensive programme of refurbishment works costing £975,000 was completed at the town hall in 1996. Congleton Town Council, which was created in 1980, established offices in the building in January 2007 and acquired its freehold in June 2008. The Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall visited the town hall and met with local charities and community groups on 24 January 2018. Works of art in the town hall include a silver gilt

ceremonial mace A ceremonial mace is a highly ornamented staff of metal or wood, carried before a sovereign or other high officials in civic ceremonies by a mace-bearer, intended to represent the official's authority. The mace, as used today, derives from the or ...

which originally bore the words "The Freedome of England by God's Blessing Restored" and the date of manufacture which was 1651 but, after the

restoration of the monarchy Restoration is the act of restoring something to its original state and may refer to: * Conservation and restoration of cultural heritage ** Audio restoration ** Film restoration ** Image restoration ** Textile restoration *Restoration ecology ...

, it was altered to show the initials "C. R." (Charles Rex) and given an amended date of 1661.

References

{{reflist Government buildings completed in 1866 City and town halls in Cheshire Congleton Grade II* listed buildings in Cheshire

History

See also

References