County Hall is a municipal building in

Morpeth Morpeth may refer to: *Morpeth, New South Wales, Australia ** Electoral district of Morpeth, a former electoral district of the Legislative Assembly in New South Wales * Morpeth, Ontario, Canada * Morpeth, Northumberland, England, UK ** Morpeth (UK ...

Northumberland Northumberland () is a county in Northern England, one of two counties in England which border with Scotland. Notable landmarks in the county include Alnwick Castle, Bamburgh Castle, Hadrian's Wall and Hexham Abbey. It is bordered by land on ...

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and North ...

. It is the offices and meeting place of

Northumberland County Council Northumberland County Council is a unitary authority in North East England. The population of the non-metropolitan unitary authority at the 2011 census was 316,028. History It was formed in 1889 as the council for the administrative county of N ...

. The current building was completed in April 1981, after the county hall was moved from the old county hall in Newcastle. A statue of a Viking Warrior stands outside the building and was moved there from Doxford Hall.

History

Statue of a Viking Warrior at County Hall (geograph 1683957)

For much of the 20th century County Hall was situated within an exclave of Northumberland (in the Moot Hall precincts) within the county borough of

Newcastle upon Tyne Newcastle upon Tyne ( RP: , ), or simply Newcastle, is a city and metropolitan borough in Tyne and Wear, England. The city is located on the River Tyne's northern bank and forms the largest part of the Tyneside built-up area. Newcastle is ...

; the area became part of the county of

Tyne and Wear Tyne and Wear () is a metropolitan county in North East England, situated around the mouths of the rivers Tyne and Wear. It was created in 1974, by the Local Government Act 1972, along with five metropolitan boroughs of Gateshead, Newcastl ...

in 1974 and was thus extraterritorial to the county of

. After deciding that this arrangement was unsatisfactory, county leaders chose to procure a new purpose-built county headquarters within the territorial limits of the county: the site selected in Morpeth had previously been agricultural land. The foundation stone for the new building was laid by

Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother Elizabeth Angela Marguerite Bowes-Lyon (4 August 1900 – 30 March 2002) was Queen of the United Kingdom and the Dominions of the British Commonwealth from 11 December 1936 to 6 February 1952 as the wife of King George VI. She was the l ...

on 6 April 1979. It was designed in the

modern style The Modern Style is a style of architecture, art, and design that first emerged in the United Kingdom in the mid-1880s. It is the first Art Nouveau style worldwide, and it represents the evolution of the Arts and Crafts movement which was native ...

and was opened on 21 April 1981. The design for the three-storey building involved continuous bands of glazing with red brick above and below:

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'' (1 ...

described it as a "spreading building of informal style in brick". A statue of a Viking Warrior, which had been sculpted by Margaret Wrightson in 1925 and placed in the grounds of Doxford Hall, was relocated to Morpeth at that time of the construction of County Hall.

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 ...

, accompanied by the

Duke of Edinburgh Duke of Edinburgh, named after the city of Edinburgh in Scotland, was a substantive title that has been created three times since 1726 for members of the British royal family. It does not include any territorial landholdings and does not produc ...

and the Duchess of Northumberland had lunch at County Hall on 26 July 2001. In October 2014 county leaders announced proposals to move the county headquarters to

Ashington Ashington is a town and civil parish in Northumberland, England, with a population of 27,864 at the 2011 Census. It was once a centre of the coal mining industry. The town is north of Newcastle upon Tyne, west of the A189 and bordered to the ...

. However, after a change in political leadership, the new county leaders announced, in May 2017, that the proposals would be abandoned. Instead a phased programme of refurbishment works were announced with a project to repair the external fabric of the building approved in February 2018, a project to repair back-of-house office areas approved in November 2018 and a project to repair the reception area approved in March 2020.

References

{{Morpeth, Northumberland Buildings and structures in Northumberland Morpeth, Northumberland M Government buildings completed in 1981