Myrtle Grove, also known since 1926 as Bingley Town Hall, is a municipal building in Myrtle Park,

Bingley Bingley is a market town and civil parish in the metropolitan borough of the City of Bradford, West Yorkshire, England, on the River Aire and the Leeds and Liverpool Canal, which had a population of 18,294 at the 2011 Census. Bingley railwa ...

West Yorkshire West Yorkshire is a metropolitan and ceremonial county in the Yorkshire and Humber Region of England. It is an inland and upland county having eastward-draining valleys while taking in the moors of the Pennines. West Yorkshire came into exi ...

, England. The building, which was the headquarters of Bingley 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

The Myrtle Grove estate dates back to the mid-18th century when it consisted of a house known as "Spring Head", a farm and an old Quaker meeting-house. In 1767, Dr Johnson Atkinson purchased the estate, demolished the existing buildings and commissioned the current mansion which was designed in the

Georgian style Georgian architecture is the name given in most English-speaking countries to the set of architectural styles current between 1714 and 1830. It is named after the first four British monarchs of the House of Hanover—George I, George II, Geor ...

, built in ashlar stone and completed in around 1770. The design involved a symmetrical main frontage with nine bays facing Myrtle Park; the central bay featured a doorway flanked by

Doric order The Doric order was one of the three orders of ancient Greek and later Roman architecture; the other two canonical orders were the Ionic and the Corinthian. The Doric is most easily recognized by the simple circular capitals at the top of c ...

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 and a

pediment Pediments are gables, usually of a triangular shape. Pediments are placed above the horizontal structure of the lintel, or entablature, if supported by columns. Pediments can contain an overdoor and are usually topped by hood moulds. A pedim ...

. There were sash windows in the other bays on the ground floor and in the bays on the first floor. The building, which also featured rusticated quoins and a high

hip roof A hip roof, hip-roof or hipped roof, is a type of roof where all sides slope downwards to the walls, usually with a fairly gentle slope (although a tented roof by definition is a hipped roof with steeply pitched slopes rising to a peak). Thus, ...

finished in Westmorland slate, was flanked by a stable block and by a coach house. Atkinson was one of the promotors of the

Bradford Canal The Bradford Canal was a English canal which ran from the Leeds and Liverpool Canal at Shipley into the centre of Bradford. It opened in 1774, and was closed in 1866, when it was declared to be a public health hazard. Four years later it reop ...

. He took on the name Johnson Atkinson Busfeild after receiving an inheritance from his wife's uncle, Thomas Busfeild, in 1772. The theologian, John Wesley, stayed at the house with him in April 1779 and referred to it as a "little paradise". The house was acquired by a Mr Birch in 1805 and then by General

William Twiss General William Twiss, (1745 – 14 March 1827), was a British Army Royal Engineer, responsible for the design of many military defences. Probably born in Kent in 1744 or 1745, Twiss worked in the ordnance office at the Tower of London from ...

in 1810. Twiss's son-in-law, Walker Ferrand, inherited the house in 1827. Following Ferrand's death, the house was put up for sale again and was acquired by a local mill-owner, Alfred Sharp, in 1874. Sharp was one of the town commissioners and having already been instrumental in founding the mechanics institute in York Street, he initiated a proposal on behalf of the town commissioners, in 1890, to take a lease on the mechanics institute, to establish a public library there and to convert the old reading room into a board room. After significant population growth, largely associated with the

worsted Worsted ( or ) is a high-quality type of wool yarn, the fabric made from this yarn, and a yarn weight category. The name derives from Worstead, a village in the English county of Norfolk. That village, together with North Walsham and Aylsham ...

yarn industry, the area became an urban district with the old mechanics institute as its town hall in 1895. After Sharp died in 1896, his wife lived at Myrtle Grove for a while, but in 1908, the new council decided to acquire the whole Myrtle Park estate for the town. The council progressively moved its staff into Myrtle Grove between 1923 and 1926, at which point the house became Bingley Town Hall. A council chamber, which was wood panelled, was installed in the building at that time. Myrtle Grove continued to serve as the headquarters of Bingley Urban District Council for much of the 20th century but ceased to be the local seat of government after the enlarged Bradford Council was formed in 1974. It was subsequently used as offices for the delivery of local services by Bradford Council.

References

{{City and town halls in West Yorkshire Government buildings completed in 1770 City and town halls in West Yorkshire Buildings and structures in Bingley Grade II listed buildings in West Yorkshire

History

See also

References