Letchworth Town Hall is a municipal building in

Broadway Broadway may refer to: Theatre * Broadway Theatre (disambiguation) * Broadway theatre, theatrical productions in professional theatres near Broadway, Manhattan, New York City, U.S. ** Broadway (Manhattan), the street **Broadway Theatre (53rd Stree ...

Letchworth Letchworth Garden City, commonly known as Letchworth, is a town in the North Hertfordshire district of Hertfordshire, England. It is noted for being the first garden city. The population at the time of the 2011 census was 33,249. Letchworth ...

Hertfordshire Hertfordshire ( or ; often abbreviated Herts) is one of the home counties in southern England. It borders Bedfordshire and Cambridgeshire to the north, Essex to the east, Greater London to the south, and Buckinghamshire to the west. For govern ...

, England. The town hall, which was the headquarters of Letchworth Urban District 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

Letchworth was developed in the early 20th century based on the ideas of the social reformer,

Ebenezer Howard Sir Ebenezer Howard (29 January 1850 – 1 May 1928) was an English urban planner and founder of the garden city movement, known for his publication '' To-Morrow: A Peaceful Path to Real Reform'' (1898), the description of a utopian city in whi ...

, and the master-planners,

Richard Barry Parker Richard Barry Parker (18 November 1867 – 21 February 1947) was an English architect and urban planner associated with the Arts and Crafts Movement. He was primarily known for his architectural partnership with Raymond Unwin. Biography ...

and

Raymond Unwin Sir Raymond Unwin (2 November 1863 – 29 June 1940) was a prominent and influential English engineer, architect and town planner, with an emphasis on improvements in working class housing. Early years Raymond Unwin was born in Rotherham, Yorks ...

, around a boulevard known as Broadway, which formed the diagonal southwest-northeast axis of the proposed garden city. After significant population growth, in part associated with arrival of the Spirella Corset Company in the town, the area became an

urban district Urban district may refer to: * District * Urban area * Quarter (urban subdivision) * Neighbourhood Specific subdivisions in some countries: * Urban districts of Denmark * Urban districts of Germany * Urban district (Great Britain and Ireland) (hist ...

in 1919. In this context civic leaders decided to procure a town hall: the site they selected was open land on the east side of Broadway. At the same time they established Broadway Gardens, which was initially known as the Town Square. The new building was designed by Robert Bennett and Wilson Bidwell in the Neo-Georgian style, built in red brick with stone dressings and completed in 1935. The design involved a symmetrical main frontage with eleven bays facing the northeast corner of the Town Square with the wing sections slightly projected forward; the central section of five bays, featured a doorway with a

fanlight A fanlight is a form of lunette window, often semicircular or semi-elliptical in shape, with glazing bars or tracery sets radiating out like an open fan. It is placed over another window or a doorway, and is sometimes hinged to a transom. Th ...

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 ...

pilaster In classical architecture Classical architecture usually denotes architecture which is more or less consciously derived from the principles of Greek and Roman architecture of classical antiquity, or sometimes even more specifically, from the ...

s supporting an open pediment on with a

cartouche In Egyptian hieroglyphs, a cartouche is an oval with a line at one end tangent to it, indicating that the text enclosed is a royal name. The first examples of the cartouche are associated with pharaohs at the end of the Third Dynasty, but the fea ...

in the tympanum. The wing sections featured prominent round headed windows with

cast iron Cast iron is a class of iron–carbon alloys with a carbon content more than 2%. Its usefulness derives from its relatively low melting temperature. The alloy constituents affect its color when fractured: white cast iron has carbide impuriti ...

balconies A balcony (from it, balcone, "scaffold") is a platform projecting from the wall of a building, supported by columns or Corbel, console brackets, and enclosed with a balustrade, usually above the ground floor. Types The traditional Malta, Malte ...

on the first floor. There were

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 on the first and second floors and, at roof level, there was a clock tower with a

cupola In architecture, a cupola () is a relatively small, most often dome-like, tall structure on top of a building. Often used to provide a lookout or to admit light and air, it usually crowns a larger roof or dome. The word derives, via Italian, from ...

and a

weather vane A wind vane, weather vane, or weathercock is an instrument used for showing the direction of the wind. It is typically used as an architectural ornament to the highest point of a building. The word ''vane'' comes from the Old English word , m ...

. Internally, the principal room was the council chamber, which was panelled, on the second floor. An electro-mechanical clock was installed in the tower to commemorate the life of Councillor Charles Francis Ball, who had died in June 1933, and in whose memory the Ball Memorial Gardens were also established to the east of Norton Way South in 1936. The building was initially called the "Council House", but was renamed the "Town Hall" in 1960. The building continued to serve as the headquarters of Letchworth Urban District Council until 1974 when that council was abolished on the formation of

North Hertfordshire District Council North is one of the four compass points or cardinal directions. It is the opposite of south and is perpendicular to east and west. ''North'' is a noun, adjective, or adverb indicating direction or geography. Etymology The word ''north'' is ...

, which, shortly after its creation, established its headquarters in a new office building nearby on Gernon Road. Letchworth Town Hall continued to be used as additional office space for the new council until 2007, when it fell vacant. After an extensive programme of restoration works to a design by

Scott Brownrigg Scott Brownrigg (originally Scott Brownrigg & Turner) is a British architecture practice with nine offices in the UK and abroad, with staff of 280. It was founded in 1910 and is headquartered in London. Company The company was originally establis ...

, the building was re-opened as an administrative centre for

North Hertfordshire College North Hertfordshire College ("NHC") is a further education and higher education college operating in Stevenage, Hitchin, and Letchworth Garden City. NHC was established on 1st April 1991, through the amalgamation of Stevenage College, Hitchin ...

in 2013. The clock in the clock tower, which by then had become one of the few remaining electro-mechanical clocks not to be replaced by an electrically motorised device, was restored in summer 2017.

References

{{Listed buildings in Hertfordshire, G2 Government buildings completed in 1935 City and town halls in Hertfordshire Buildings and structures in Letchworth Grade II listed buildings in Hertfordshire