Dewsbury Town Hall is a Victorian town hall that stands in front of the old marketplace in the centre of

Dewsbury Dewsbury is a minster and market town in the Metropolitan Borough of Kirklees in West Yorkshire, England. It lies on the River Calder and on an arm of the Calder and Hebble Navigation waterway. It is to the west of Wakefield, east of Hudder ...

West Yorkshire West Yorkshire is a metropolitan and ceremonial county in the Yorkshire and Humber Region of England. It is an inland and upland county having eastward-draining valleys while taking in the moors of the Pennines. West Yorkshire came into exi ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

. It 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 site chosen for the town hall had previously been occupied by a hotel, a forge, a blacksmith and some other small businesses. The foundation stone was laid by the Thomas Bateman Fox JP, mayor of Dewsbury, on 12 October 1886. The building was designed by local architects Henry Holtom and George Arthur Fox. The clock in the tower, which was financed by a gift from Alderman Mark Oldroyd, a later mayor, was supplied by William Potts and Son of Leeds and installed on 2 April 1889. The building itself was built by Chadwick & Sons at a cost of £40,000 and was officially opened by Alderman John Walker JP, the next mayor, on 17 September 1889.

King George V George V (George Frederick Ernest Albert; 3 June 1865 – 20 January 1936) was King of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions, and Emperor of India, from 6 May 1910 until his death in 1936. Born during the reign of his grandmother Que ...

and Queen Mary visited the town hall in July 1912 and returned in early 1918 to thank the people of Dewsbury for their efforts during the

First World War World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

. In 1928, Charles Brook Crawshaw, a local

colliery Coal mining is the process of extracting coal from the ground. Coal is valued for its energy content and since the 1880s has been widely used to generate electricity. Steel and cement industries use coal as a fuel for extraction of iron from ...

proprietor, left a collection of important paintings to the town hall including "Joshua Commanding the Sun to Stand Still upon Gibeon", painted by John Martin in 1848, and "Stocks Closed Firmly with an Upward Tendency", painted by William Strutt in 1889. During the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

a bomb fell close to the town hall killing five residents and blowing out one of the stained glass windows in the building. In January 1981,

Peter Sutcliffe Peter William Sutcliffe (2 June 1946 – 13 November 2020) was an English serial killer who was dubbed the Yorkshire Ripper (an allusion to Jack the Ripper) by the press. Sutcliffe was convicted of murdering 13 women and attempting t ...

, the "Yorkshire Ripper", was held in the cells in the town hall following his arrest and he then appeared in the magistrates' court there. The magistrates' court in the town hall closed in the late 1980s. More recently the building has been used in various television productions including the

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series '' Spanish Flu: The Forgotten Fallen'' in August 2009, the

ITV ITV or iTV may refer to: ITV *Independent Television (ITV), a British television network, consisting of: ** ITV (TV network), a free-to-air national commercial television network covering the United Kingdom, the Isle of Man, and the Channel Islan ...

series ''

Emmerdale ''Emmerdale'' (known as ''Emmerdale Farm'' until 1989) is a British soap opera that is broadcast on ITV1. The show is set in Emmerdale (known as Beckindale until 1994), a fictional village in the Yorkshire Dales. Created by Kevin Laffan, '' ...

'' in July 2011, the ITV series ''

Eternal Law Thomas Aquinas, OP (; it, Tommaso d'Aquino, lit=Thomas of Aquino; 1225 – 7 March 1274) was an Italian Dominican friar and priest who was an influential philosopher, theologian and jurist in the tradition of scholasticism; he is known wit ...

'' in May 2011 and the BBC series ''

Love, Lies and Records ''Love, Lies and Records'' is a British drama series, first broadcast on BBC One from 16 November to 21 December 2017. It follows registrar Kate Dickenson (Ashley Jensen) as she tries to juggle her personal life with the daily dramas of births, m ...

'' in March 2017.

Services

The town hall contains a 700-seat concert hall, function and meeting rooms, and an old court room.

References

External links

List of former mayors of Dewsbury 1862–1974
{{Coord, 53.6915, -1.6269, type:landmark_region:GB, display=title Buildings and structures in Dewsbury Grade II listed buildings in West Yorkshire City and town halls in West Yorkshire Government buildings with domes Government buildings completed in 1889

History

Services

See also

References

External links