The Cornhill Corn Exchange was a commercial building in the Market Place,

Banbury Banbury is an historic market town and civil parish on the River Cherwell in Oxfordshire, South East England. The parish had a population of 54,335 at the 2021 Census. Banbury is a significant commercial and retail centre for the surrounding ...

Oxfordshire Oxfordshire ( ; abbreviated ''Oxon'') is a ceremonial county in South East England. The county is bordered by Northamptonshire and Warwickshire to the north, Buckinghamshire to the east, Berkshire to the south, and Wiltshire and Glouceste ...

, England. The façade of the building, which has been preserved and now forms an entrance to a shopping centre, is a Grade II

listed building In the United Kingdom, a listed building is a structure of particular architectural or historic interest deserving of special protection. Such buildings are placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Hi ...

History

In the early 1850s, a group of local businessmen formed the Banbury Corn Exchange Company, to finance and commission a

corn exchange A corn exchange is a building where merchants trade grains. The word "corn" in British English denotes all cereal grains, such as wheat and barley; in the United States these buildings were called grain exchanges. Such trade was common in towns ...

for the town. The site they selected was in the northeast corner of the Market Place in an area known as Cornhill. The group received political support from the

Conservative Conservatism is a cultural, social, and political philosophy and ideology that seeks to promote and preserve traditional institutions, customs, and values. The central tenets of conservatism may vary in relation to the culture and civiliza ...

councillors and their building was financed by Gilletts Bank. The new building was designed by William Hill of

Leeds Leeds is a city in West Yorkshire, England. It is the largest settlement in Yorkshire and the administrative centre of the City of Leeds Metropolitan Borough, which is the second most populous district in the United Kingdom. It is built aro ...

, built by Messrs Kimberly of Banbury in

ashlar Ashlar () is a cut and dressed rock (geology), stone, worked using a chisel to achieve a specific form, typically rectangular in shape. The term can also refer to a structure built from such stones. Ashlar is the finest stone masonry unit, a ...

stone and was officially opened on 3 September 1857. The design involved a symmetrical main frontage of five bays facing onto the Market Place. The central section of the three bays featured tall round headed openings with

architrave In classical architecture, an architrave (; , also called an epistyle; ) is the lintel or beam, typically made of wood or stone, that rests on the capitals of columns. The term can also apply to all sides, including the vertical members, ...

s and keystones on the ground floor, and small round headed windows with architraves on the first floor. The outer bays contained blind round headed windows on both floors. The bays of the central section were flanked by pairs of

Corinthian order The Corinthian order (, ''Korinthiakós rythmós''; ) is the last developed and most ornate of the three principal classical orders of Ancient Greek architecture and Ancient Roman architecture, Roman architecture. The other two are the Doric or ...

columns supporting a

frieze In classical architecture, the frieze is the wide central section of an entablature and may be plain in the Ionic order, Ionic or Corinthian order, Corinthian orders, or decorated with bas-reliefs. Patera (architecture), Paterae are also ...

, 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 ...

and a

pediment Pediments are a form of gable in classical architecture, usually of a triangular shape. Pediments are placed above the horizontal structure of the cornice (an elaborated lintel), or entablature if supported by columns.Summerson, 130 In an ...

. There was a

quatrefoil A quatrefoil (anciently caterfoil) is a decorative element consisting of a symmetrical shape which forms the overall outline of four partially overlapping circles of the same diameter. It is found in art, architecture, heraldry and traditional ...

surmounted by a ram's head as well as fruit and foliage in the tympanum, and, at the apex of the pediment, there was a statue of the Roman goddess of agriculture, Ceres. The elaborate stone carving was undertaken by Thorpe and Ponder. The architectural historian,

Nikolaus Pevsner Sir Nikolaus Bernhard Leon Pevsner (30 January 1902 – 18 August 1983) was a German-British art historian and architectural historian best known for his monumental 46-volume series of county-by-county guides, ''The Buildings of England'' (195 ...

, criticised the design describing it as "a pompous classical palace". The Cornhill Corn Exchange got into financial difficulty after suffering substantial competition from a rival group of businessmen which formed the "Central Corn Exchange for Banbury Company": this group had political support from Liberal councillors and their building was financed by Cobbs Bank: it was erected on a site in the southwest corner of the Market Place and opened it on the same day as the Cornhill Corn Exchange. The use of the building as a corn exchange declined significantly in the wake of the Great Depression of British Agriculture in the late 19th century. Instead, it was converted into a public house known as the Vine Tavern in 1891. Most of the building was demolished in 1973 leaving the façade to become the entrance to the new Castle Quay Shopping Centre.

Notes

References

{{reflist Commercial buildings completed in 1857 Grade II listed buildings in Oxfordshire

William Hill (English architect) buildings Banbury

History

See also

Notes

References