The Municipal Offices ( cy, Swyddfeydd Bwrdeistrefol Blaenafon) are in Lion Street,

Blaenavon Blaenavon ( cy, Blaenafon) is a town and community (Wales), community in Torfaen county borough, Wales, high on a hillside on the source of the Afon Lwyd. It is within the boundaries of the historic county of Monmouthshire (historic), Monmouthshi ...

Torfaen Torfaen (; cy, Torfaen ) is a county borough in the south-east of Wales. Torfaen is bordered by the county of Monmouthshire to the east, the city of Newport to the south, and the county boroughs of Caerphilly and Blaenau Gwent to the south ...

Wales Wales ( cy, Cymru ) is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is bordered by England to the Wales–England border, east, the Irish Sea to the north and west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the ...

. The structure, which was used as the headquarters of Blaenavon 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

Following significant population growth, largely associated with the local

ironworks An ironworks or iron works is an industrial plant where iron is smelted and where heavy iron and steel products are made. The term is both singular and plural, i.e. the singular of ''ironworks'' is ''ironworks''. Ironworks succeeded bloomeri ...

, a

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 ...

was established in Blaenavon in 1858 and subsequently established its offices in an existing building in Lion Street; after 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 1894, the new urban district council retained the building as its offices. By the late 1920s, the building had become dilapidated and council officials decided to demolish the it and to commission bespoke offices on the same site. The new building was designed by the town surveyor, John Morgan, in the

neoclassical style Neoclassical architecture is an architectural style produced by the Neoclassicism, Neoclassical movement that began in the mid-18th century in Italy and France. It became one of the most prominent architectural styles in the Western world. The pr ...

, built in brick with a rusticated

stucco Stucco or render is a construction material made of aggregates, a binder, and water. Stucco is applied wet and hardens to a very dense solid. It is used as a decorative coating for walls and ceilings, exterior walls, and as a sculptural and a ...

finish on the ground floor and with a rendered

roughcast Roughcast or pebbledash is a coarse plaster surface used on outside walls that consists of lime and sometimes cement mixed with sand, small gravel and often pebbles or shells. The materials are mixed into a slurry and are then thrown at the wor ...

finish on the first floor, and was completed in 1930. The design involved a broadly symmetrical main frontage with five bays facing onto Lion Street. The central bay featured a doorway which was flanked by

brackets A bracket is either of two tall fore- or back-facing punctuation marks commonly used to isolate a segment of text or data from its surroundings. Typically deployed in symmetric pairs, an individual bracket may be identified as a 'left' or 'r ...

supporting a stone

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

; there were French doors on the first floor and a

Dutch gable A Dutch gable or Flemish gable is a gable whose sides have a shape made up of one or more curves and has a pediment at the top. The gable may be an entirely decorative projection above a flat section of roof line, or may be the termination of a ...

with

finial A finial (from '' la, finis'', end) or hip-knob is an element marking the top or end of some object, often formed to be a decorative feature. In architecture, it is a small decorative device, employed to emphasize the Apex (geometry), apex of a d ...

s above. Additional Dutch gables were used as decoration above the first bay on the left and above the

canted Cant, CANT, canting, or canted may refer to: Language * Cant (language), a secret language * Beurla Reagaird, a language of the Scottish Highland Travellers * Scottish Cant, a language of the Scottish Lowland Travellers * Shelta or the Cant, a lan ...

bay on the corner with the High Street. Internally, the principal room was the council chamber on the first floor. The building continued to serve as the offices of the urban district council for much of the 20th century, but ceased to be the local seat of government when the enlarged Torfaen District Council was established in 1974. It was then used by Torfaen District Council as a "sub-office" until the early 1990s, when it was abandoned and the building started deteriorating badly. A major programme of restoration works, costing £800,000, was completed in 2001. On completion of the works, the local public library, which had been based in a former school building in Park Street, relocated to the municipal offices. The Blaenavon Museum, which had acquired the collection of the novelist,

Alexander Cordell Alexander Cordell (9 September 1914 – 9 July 1997) was the pen name of George Alexander Graber. He was a prolific Welsh novelist and author of 30 acclaimed works which include, ''Rape of the Fair Country'', '' Hosts of Rebecca'' and '' So ...

, moved into the basement of the municipal offices in 2002. However, in 2015, Torfaen Council decided to rationalise its estate and, after the library had moved to the Blaenavon World Heritage in Church Road and museum had relocated to the Blaenavon Workmen's Hall, the municipal offices were sold to a private investor for commercial use in 2016.

References

{{reflist Grade II listed buildings in Torfaen Government buildings completed in 1930 City and town halls in Wales Blaenavon