Larne Town Hall is a municipal structure in Upper Cross Street in

Larne Larne (, , the name of a Gaelic Ireland, Gaelic territory) is a town on the east coast of County Antrim, Northern Ireland, with a population of 18,755 at the United Kingdom census, 2011, 2011 Census. It is a major passenger and freight Roll-on/ro ...

County Antrim County Antrim (named after the town of Antrim, ) is one of six counties of Northern Ireland and one of the thirty-two counties of Ireland. Adjoined to the north-east shore of Lough Neagh, the county covers an area of and has a population o ...

, Northern Ireland. The structure, which was the meeting place of Larne Borough Council, is a Grade B+

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 town hall was financed by a donation by the Ulster-Scots merchant,

Charles McGarel Charles McGarel (1788–1876) was an Ireland-born Ulster-Scots merchant and slave owner. In 1833, the British Government abolished slavery and compensated owners, such as McGarel, who became a major beneficiaries of this scheme. With his weal ...

. It was designed by Alexander Tate in the

Gothic Revival style Gothic Revival (also referred to as Victorian Gothic, neo-Gothic, or Gothick) is an architectural movement that began in the late 1740s in England. The movement gained momentum and expanded in the first half of the 19th century, as increasingly ...

, built Stewart & Company of

Belfast Belfast ( , ; from ga, Béal Feirste , meaning 'mouth of the sand-bank ford') is the capital and largest city of Northern Ireland, standing on the banks of the River Lagan on the east coast. It is the 12th-largest city in the United Kingdo ...

rubble masonry Rubble stone is rough, uneven building stone not laid in regular courses. It may fill the core of a wall which is faced with unit masonry such as brick or ashlar. Analogously, some medieval cathedral walls are outer shells of ashlar with an inn ...

at a cost of £5,500 and was officially opened on 25 August 1870. The design involved an asymmetrical main frontage with eleven bays facing onto Upper Cross Street with the left hand end bay projected forward as a

pavilion In architecture, ''pavilion'' has several meanings: * It may be a subsidiary building that is either positioned separately or as an attachment to a main building. Often it is associated with pleasure. In palaces and traditional mansions of Asia ...

; the central bay featured a four-stage clock tower with an arched doorway flanked by

colonette A colonnette is a small slender column, usually decorative, which supports a beam or lintel. Colonettes have also been used to refer to a feature of furnishings such as a dressing table and case clock, and even studied by archeologists in Roman ce ...

s in the first stage, a

lancet window A lancet window is a tall, narrow window with a pointed arch at its top. It acquired the "lancet" name from its resemblance to a lance. Instances of this architectural element are typical of Gothic church edifices of the earliest period. Lancet wi ...

in the second stage, an

oculus Oculus (a term from Latin ''oculus'', meaning 'eye'), may refer to the following Architecture * Oculus (architecture), a circular opening in the centre of a dome or in a wall Arts, entertainment, and media * ''Oculus'' (film), a 2013 American ...

in the third stage and a belfry with a clock and a

pyramid A pyramid (from el, πυραμίς ') is a structure whose outer surfaces are triangular and converge to a single step at the top, making the shape roughly a pyramid in the geometric sense. The base of a pyramid can be trilateral, quadrilat ...

al roof in the fourth stage. The left hand section featured six tall arched traceried windows on a single floor, while the right hand section was slightly set back and featured tall arched traceried windows on two floors. The traceried windows in both sections took the form of pairs of lancet windows separated by colonettes. The left hand end bay formed a caretaker's house. Internally, the principal rooms were the assembly hall, known as the "McGarel Hall", in the left hand section, the public reading room on the ground floor of the right hand section and the library and museum on the first floor of the right hand section. The town was advanced to the status of

municipal borough Municipal boroughs were a type of local government district which existed in England and Wales between 1835 and 1974, in Northern Ireland from 1840 to 1973 and in the Republic of Ireland from 1840 to 2002. Broadly similar structures existed in S ...

, with the town hall as its headquarters, in 1938. It also became a significant events venue and performers included the singer, Bridie Gallagher, in 1949, but it ceased to be the local seat of government when the council relocated to the Sir Thomas Dixon Buildings in the early 1960s. An extensive programme of refurbishment works, as well as the demolition of an existing annex and the construction of a new three-storey extension, was carried out by Tracey Brothers and completed in 2012. After particularly bad winter storms in March 2013, the

Prince of Wales Prince of Wales ( cy, Tywysog Cymru, ; la, Princeps Cambriae/Walliae) is a title traditionally given to the heir apparent to the English and later British throne. Prior to the conquest by Edward I in the 13th century, it was used by the rulers ...

visited the town hall in June 2013 and met with members of the farming community who had been adversely affected by the extreme weather. In June 2020,

Amnesty International Amnesty International (also referred to as Amnesty or AI) is an international non-governmental organization focused on human rights, with its headquarters in the United Kingdom. The organization says it has more than ten million members and sup ...

asked for the McGarel Hall to be renamed on the basis that, as a young man, McGarel had owned at least 1,000 slaves at a sugar plantation in

Demerara Demerara ( nl, Demerary, ) is a historical region in the Guianas, on the north coast of South America, now part of the country of Guyana. It was a colony of the Dutch West India Company between 1745 and 1792 and a colony of the Dutch state fro ...

in South America, and that part of his wealth had been generated from the compensation he had received for the loss of those slaves. Council officials said that they had no plans to change the name.

References

{{Government buildings in Northern Ireland Government buildings completed in 1870 City and town halls in Northern Ireland Buildings and structures in Larne Grade B+ listed buildings

History

See also

References