The Municipal Buildings are in Oldbury town centre, West Midlands, England. The structure served as the headquarters of Oldbury Borough Council.

History

In the late 1880s the

local board of health Local boards or local boards of health were local authorities in urban areas of England and Wales from 1848 to 1894. They were formed in response to cholera epidemics and were given powers to control sewers, clean the streets, regulate environmenta ...

decided to procure municipal buildings for the town. The chosen site, on the corner of Halesowen and Freeth Street, adjoined an existing public hall and was next to the site previously occupied by the old chapel of St Nicholas which, after having become very dilapidated, had been demolished. The new building was designed by Wood and Kendrick of

West Bromwich West Bromwich ( ) is a market town in the borough of Sandwell, West Midlands, England. Historically part of Staffordshire, it is north-west of Birmingham. West Bromwich is part of the area known as the Black Country, in terms of geography, c ...

in the

Renaissance style Renaissance architecture is the European architecture of the period between the early 15th and early 16th centuries in different regions, demonstrating a conscious revival and development of certain elements of ancient Greek and Roman thought a ...

, built by John Dallow and Sons of Blackheath in brick with

terracotta Terracotta, terra cotta, or terra-cotta (; ; ), in its material sense as an earthenware substrate, is a clay-based unglazed or glazed ceramic where the fired body is porous. In applied art, craft, construction, and architecture, terracotta ...

facings and was officially opened as "the Public Buildings" in 1891. The design involved an asymmetrical main frontage with five bays facing onto Freeth Street; the second bay from the left featured an arched doorway flanked by

pilaster In classical architecture, a pilaster is an architectural element used to give the appearance of a supporting column and to articulate an extent of wall, with only an ornamental function. It consists of a flat surface raised from the main wal ...

s supporting an entablature. The other bays contained

mullion A mullion is a vertical element that forms a division between units of a window or screen, or is used decoratively. It is also often used as a division between double doors. When dividing adjacent window units its primary purpose is a rigid supp ...

ed windows on the ground floor and round headed windows on the first floor. At roof level the second and fourth bays featured shaped gables containing small mullioned windows. The building also featured a prominent tower at its southeast corner with a clock, octagonal

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, fro ...

and

spire A spire is a tall, slender, pointed structure on top of a roof of a building or tower, especially at the summit of church steeples. A spire may have a square, circular, or polygonal plan, with a roughly conical or pyramidal shape. Spires a ...

. The clock was designed and manufactured by Clement Pass of Oldbury. The principal rooms were the council chamber in the tower corner on the first floor and the public library on the ground floor. The public offices were accessed from Freeth Street whilst the public library had a separate entrance in Halesowen Street. Following population growth, largely associated with the local railway carriage works and iron manufacturing, the area became an urban district with the municipal buildings as its headquarters in 1894. A war memorial, to commemorate the lives of local service personnel who had died in 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 ...

was established outside the town hall. It initially took the form of a

Mark IV tank The Mark IV (pronounced ''Mark four'') was a British tank of the First World War. Introduced in 1917, it benefited from significant developments of the Mark I tank (the intervening designs being small batches used for training). The main impro ...

which had been manufactured by Oldbury Carriage Works and donated by the

War Office The War Office was a department of the British Government responsible for the administration of the British Army between 1857 and 1964, when its functions were transferred to the new Ministry of Defence (MoD). This article contains text from ...

. A permanent war memorial, in the form of a

cenotaph A cenotaph is an empty tomb or a monument erected in honour of a person or group of people whose remains are elsewhere. It can also be the initial tomb for a person who has since been reinterred elsewhere. Although the vast majority of cenot ...

, was erected by John Dallow and Sons and unveiled by General

Sir Ian Hamilton Sir Ian Standish Monteith Hamilton, (16 January 1853 – 12 October 1947) was a British Army general who had an extensive British Imperial military career in the Victorian and Edwardian eras. Hamilton was twice recommended for the Victoria Cro ...

on 4 November 1926. The council 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 municipal buildings as its headquarters in 1935. The municipal offices continued to serve as the headquarters of the borough for much of the 20th century but ceased to be the local seat of government when the new

Warley County Borough Warley was a short-lived county borough and civil parish in the geographical county of Worcestershire, England, forming part of the West Midlands conurbation. It was formed in 1966 by the combination of the existing county borough of Smethwick w ...

was formed at Smethwick Council House in 1966.

Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council was created in 1974 to administer the newly formed Metropolitan Borough of Sandwell, in the West Midlands county of England. The council offices are located at the Council House, Freeth Street, Oldbury to ...

, which was formed in 1974, was initially based at

West Bromwich Town Hall West Bromwich Town Hall is a municipal building in West Bromwich, West Midlands, England. It is a Grade II listed building. History The town hall was commissioned at the instigation of the West Bromwich Town Improvement Commissioners, chaired ...

but moved to modern facilities at the new Sandwell Council House on the east side of Freeth Street, Oldbury in 1989. The municipal buildings in Oldbury went on to serve as the local offices of

Citizens Advice Citizens AdviceCitizens Advice is the operating name of The National Association of Citizens Advice Bureaux which is the umbrella charity for a wider network of local advice centres. The abbreviation CitA is sometimes used to refer to this nation ...

Notes

References

{{reflist Government buildings completed in 1891 City and town halls in the West Midlands (county) Oldbury, West Midlands