Hawkshead Market Hall, also known as Hawkshead Town Hall, is a municipal building in The Square in

Hawkshead Hawkshead is a village and civil parish in Cumbria, England, which attracts tourists to the South Lakeland area. The parish includes the hamlets of Hawkshead Hill, to the north west, and Outgate, a similar distance north. Hawkshead contains on ...

Cumbria Cumbria ( ) is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in North West England, bordering Scotland. The county and Cumbria County Council, its local government, came into existence in 1974 after the passage of the Local Government Act 1972. Cumb ...

, England. The building, which is the meeting place of Hawkshead Parish 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 municipal building in Hawkshead was a structure known as the shambles which accommodated a series of butchers' stalls and dated back at least to the early 17th century. By the late 18th century the shambles was dilapidated and the Rector of St Michael and All Angels Church, Reginald Braithwaite, and the headmaster of the local grammar school, Thomas Bowman, launched an initiative to commission a more substantial structure. Braithwaite almost certainly personally contributed to the financing of the structure. The new building was designed by Francis Webster, under guidance from John Carr, 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 ...

, built in brick with a whitewash finish and was completed in 1790. The original design involved a symmetrical main frontage with seven bays facing onto The Square; the building was arcaded on the ground floor, so that markets could be held, with an assembly room on the first floor. The central section of three bays, which slightly projected forward and was gabled, was fenestrated by three round headed windows. The outer sections of two bays each, which were shorter than the central section, were fenestrated by rectangular windows. The poet,

William Wordsworth William Wordsworth (7 April 177023 April 1850) was an English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with their joint publication ''Lyrical Ballads'' (1798). Wordsworth's ' ...

, who disliked whitewashed buildings, referred to the building in his ''

magnum opus A masterpiece, ''magnum opus'' (), or ''chef-d’œuvre'' (; ; ) in modern use is a creation that has been given much critical praise, especially one that is considered the greatest work of a person's career or a work of outstanding creativity, ...

'', ''

The Prelude ''The Prelude or, Growth of a Poet's Mind; An Autobiographical Poem '' is an autobiographical poem in blank verse by the English poet William Wordsworth. Intended as the introduction to the more philosophical poem ''The Recluse,'' which Wordsw ...

'', a semi-autobiographical poem about his early years in the local area. He wrote that when he returned to Hawkshead, "a grey stone of native rock…was split and gone to build a smart assembly room that perked and flared".

Petty session Courts of petty session, established from around the 1730s, were local courts consisting of magistrates, held for each petty sessional division (usually based on the county divisions known as hundreds) in England, Wales, and Ireland. The sessio ...

hearings were held on a fortnightly basis in the assembly room in the 19th century. As part of the celebrations for the

Golden Jubilee of Queen Victoria The Golden Jubilee of Queen Victoria was celebrated on 20 and 21 June 1887 to mark the 50th anniversary of Queen Victoria's accession on 20 June 1837. It was celebrated with a Thanksgiving Service at Westminster Abbey, and a banquet to which ...

in 1887, the trustees of the market hall decided to re-model the building: the central gable was removed and the right-hand section was increased in height and re-fenestrated in a similar style to the central section. The left-hand section became the caretaker's cottage and was enhanced by a

Venetian window A Venetian window (also known as a Serlian window) is a large tripartite window which is a key element in Palladian architecture. Although Sebastiano Serlio (1475–1554) did not invent it, the window features largely in the work of the Italian a ...

at that end of the structure. When parish and district councils were established under the

Local Government Act 1894 The Local Government Act 1894 (56 & 57 Vict. c. 73) was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that reformed local government in England and Wales outside the County of London. The Act followed the reforms carried out at county level un ...

, a local parish council was formed in Hawkshead and the market hall subsequently became its meeting place. Following an extensive programme of refurbishment works, which included the installation of new kitchen facilities on the ground floor, the building was re-opened by the

comedian A comedian or comic is a person who seeks to entertain an audience by making them laugh. This might be through jokes or amusing Amusement is the state of experiencing humorous and entertaining events or situations while the person or a ...

Victoria Wood Victoria Wood (19 May 1953 – 20 April 2016) was an English comedian, actress, lyricist, singer, composer, pianist, screenwriter, producer and director. Wood wrote and starred in dozens of sketches, plays, musicals, films and sitcoms over se ...

, as part of the celebrations for the

Diamond Jubilee of Elizabeth II The year 2012 marked the Diamond Jubilee of Elizabeth II being the 60th anniversary of the accession of Queen Elizabeth II on 6 February 1952. The only diamond jubilee celebration for any of Elizabeth's predecessors was in 1897, for the 60th an ...

in 2012. Works of art in the town hall include a painting by

Lucy Kemp-Welch Lucy Elizabeth Kemp-Welch (20 June 1869 – 27 November 1958) was a British artist and teacher who specialised in painting horses. Though increasingly overlooked after the Second World War, from the late 1890s to the mid 1920s she was one o ...

entitled ''Logging in Grizedale Forest''.

References

{{reflist Government buildings completed in 1790 City and town halls in Cumbria Grade II listed buildings in Cumbria Hawkshead

History

See also

References