Folkestone Town Hall, also known as The Guildhall, is a municipal building in Guildhall Street,
Folkestone
Folkestone ( ) is a port town on the English Channel, in Kent, south-east England. The town lies on the southern edge of the North Downs at a valley between two cliffs. It was an important harbour and shipping port for most of the 19th and 20t ...
,
Kent
Kent is a county in South East England and one of the home counties. It borders Greater London to the north-west, Surrey to the west and East Sussex to the south-west, and Essex to the north across the estuary of the River Thames; it faces ...
, England. The town hall, which was the headquarters of Folkestone Borough Council, 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 first guildhall in Folkestone, which was designed with arcading on the ground floor to allow markets to be held and with an assembly room on the first floor, was a medieval building erected on the corner of Church Street and Rendezvous Street which was rebuilt in the 17th century. It had its own
lock-up for petty criminals After becoming dilapidated, the old guildhall was demolished in 1840. Civic leaders moved to a small
crenelated
A battlement in defensive architecture, such as that of city walls or castles, comprises a parapet (i.e., a defensive low wall between chest-height and head-height), in which gaps or indentations, which are often rectangular, occur at interv ...
building known as Cistern House which was leased from the
Earl of Radnor
Earl of Radnor, in the County of Wiltshire, is a title which has been created twice. It was first created in the Peerage of England in 1679 for John Robartes, 2nd Baron Robartes, a notable political figure of the reign of Charles II. The ea ...
.
In the early 1850s civic leaders decided to demolish Cistern House and build a dedicated town hall on the same site.
[
The foundation stone for the new building was laid on 17 May 1859.] It was designed by Joseph Messenger in the Italianate style
The Italianate style was a distinct 19th-century phase in the history of Classical architecture. Like Palladianism and Neoclassicism, the Italianate style drew its inspiration from the models and architectural vocabulary of 16th-century Italian R ...
and was built by John Edwards in Portland stone
Portland stone is a limestone from the Tithonian stage of the Jurassic period quarried on the Isle of Portland, Dorset. The quarries are cut in beds of white-grey limestone separated by chert beds. It has been used extensively as a building sto ...
at a cost of £8,683. After the structural design was found to be inadequate in the context of an underground drain, Messenger resigned and Messrs Whichford and Blandford of Maidstone
Maidstone is the largest Town status in the United Kingdom, town in Kent, England, of which it is the county town. Maidstone is historically important and lies 32 miles (51 km) east-south-east of London. The River Medway runs through the c ...
took over the design work. The building was officially opened by the mayor on 18 May 1861.[ The opening was celebrated with a concert which included a solo ]violin
The violin, sometimes known as a ''fiddle'', is a wooden chordophone (string instrument) in the violin family. Most violins have a hollow wooden body. It is the smallest and thus highest-pitched instrument (soprano) in the family in regular ...
performance by H. Weist Hill of the Royal Italian Opera
The Royal Opera House (ROH) is an opera house and major performing arts venue in Covent Garden, central London. The large building is often referred to as simply Covent Garden, after a previous use of the site. It is the home of The Royal O ...
.[
The design involved a symmetrical main frontage with five bays facing onto Guildhall Street; the ground floor was rusticated with five round headed openings with ]keystones
A keystone (or capstone) is the wedge-shaped stone at the apex of a masonry arch or typically round-shaped one at the apex of a vault. In both cases it is the final piece placed during construction and locks all the stones into position, allo ...
while the first floor featured five 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 with, alternately, curved and triangular pediments; the first floor windows were flanked by Corinthian order
The Corinthian order (Greek: Κορινθιακός ρυθμός, Latin: ''Ordo Corinthius'') is the last developed of the three principal classical orders of Ancient Greek architecture and Roman architecture. The other two are the Doric order ...
columns and at roof level there was a cornice
In architecture, a cornice (from the Italian ''cornice'' meaning "ledge") is generally any horizontal decorative moulding that crowns a building or furniture element—for example, the cornice over a door or window, around the top edge of a ...
with modillion
A modillion is an ornate bracket, more horizontal in shape and less imposing than a corbel. They are often seen underneath a cornice which it helps to support. Modillions are more elaborate than dentils (literally translated as small teeth). All ...
s.[ Internally, the principal room was the council chamber on the first floor.][
A illuminated clock, given by Baron Mayer Amschel de Rothschild, was installed on 15 October 1861 and a porch with ]Tuscan order
The Tuscan order (Latin ''Ordo Tuscanicus'' or ''Ordo Tuscanus'', with the meaning of Etruscan order) is one of the two classical orders developed by the Romans, the other being the composite order. It is influenced by the Doric order, but with u ...
columns was added in 1879.[ The town hall was used as an air raid shelter during the latter years of 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 ...
and, in October 1934, it was the venue for the inquest into the deaths of the five of the seven people who had died in the Hillman's Airways de Havilland Dragon Rapide crash which had taken place in the English Channel
The English Channel, "The Sleeve"; nrf, la Maunche, "The Sleeve" (Cotentinais) or ( Jèrriais), (Guernésiais), "The Channel"; br, Mor Breizh, "Sea of Brittany"; cy, Môr Udd, "Lord's Sea"; kw, Mor Bretannek, "British Sea"; nl, Het Kana ...
earlier that month. It was then used as a military control centre 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 ...
.[
The town hall continued to serve as the headquarters of Folkestone Borough Council for much of the 20th century but ceased to be the local seat of government when the enlarged Shepway District Council was formed in 1974. The ground floor of the building was converted for retail use in the late 1980s and the first floor was converted for use as a cinema at the same time.][ The building was acquired by Folkestone Town Council in June 2011: following a programme of restoration works, which were
undertaken to a design by Godden Allen Lawn, financed by the ]Heritage Lottery Fund
The National Lottery Heritage Fund, formerly the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF), distributes a share of National Lottery funding, supporting a wide range of heritage projects across the United Kingdom.
History
The fund's predecessor bodies were ...
and aimed at refurbishing the council chamber and creating space for the Folkestone Museum, the building re-opened in spring 2017.
Folkestone Museum
The museum, which was originally based around a collection of fossils belonging to Samuel Joseph Mackie, was initially established in temporary facilities in Tontine Street in the 1860s before moving into the new library at Grace Hill in 1888. The collection was enhanced during the course of the 20th century by the acquisition of various archaeological discoveries, by some paintings by Spanish and Italian masters and with some engravings by Albrecht Dürer
Albrecht Dürer (; ; hu, Ajtósi Adalbert; 21 May 1471 – 6 April 1528),Müller, Peter O. (1993) ''Substantiv-Derivation in Den Schriften Albrecht Dürers'', Walter de Gruyter. . sometimes spelled in English as Durer (without an umlaut) or Due ...
, before it relocated to the town hall in spring 2017.[
]
References
{{reflist
Government buildings completed in 1861
City and town halls in Kent
Folkestone
Grade II listed buildings in Kent