New Romney Town Hall is a municipal structure in the High Street,

New Romney New Romney is a market town in Kent, England, on the edge of Romney Marsh, an area of flat, rich agricultural land reclaimed from the sea after the harbour began to silt up. New Romney, one of the original Cinque Ports, was once a sea port, w ...

Kent Kent is a county in South East England and one of the home counties. It borders Greater London to the north-west, Surrey to the west and East Sussex to the south-west, and Essex to the north across the estuary of the River Thames; it faces ...

, England. The structure, which is the meeting place of New Romney Town 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 building, which was originally commissioned by the local

bailiff A bailiff (from Middle English baillif, Old French ''baillis'', ''bail'' "custody") is a manager, overseer or custodian – a legal officer to whom some degree of authority or jurisdiction is given. Bailiffs are of various kinds and their offi ...

as a market hall, was designed in the

Italianate style The Italianate style was a distinct 19th-century phase in the history of Classical architecture. Like Palladianism and Neoclassicism, the Italianate style drew its inspiration from the models and architectural vocabulary of 16th-century Italian R ...

and was completed in 1702. The design involved a symmetrical main frontage with five bays facing onto the High Street with the end bays slightly projected forward; it was originally arcaded on the ground floor so that markets could be held. A lock-up for incarcerating petty criminals was erected to the east of the town hall in the mid-18th century and the town hall was given a new

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 ...

façade in the early 19th century. The town hall was the venue for the inquest into the death of Louisa Kidder-Staples in August 1867: her step-mother,

Frances Kidder Frances Kidder (c. 1843 – 2 April 1868) was the last woman to be publicly hanged in Britain. She was convicted of murdering her stepdaughter, Louisa Kidder-Staples. Crime In 1865 Frances Turner married William Kidder, the father of her illegiti ...

, was subsequently found guilty of murdering her and became the last woman to be publicly hanged in the UK. The ground floor of the town hall was infilled in 1884: following these alterations, the central bay featured a doorway with an

architrave In classical architecture, an architrave (; from it, architrave "chief beam", also called an epistyle; from Greek ἐπίστυλον ''epistylon'' "door frame") is the lintel or beam that rests on the capitals of columns. The term can ...

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 an open

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 pedimen ...

while the outer bays contained doorways with

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 ...

s flanked by

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 and brackets supporting triangular pediments. On the ground floor, the bays on either side of the central bay were fenestrated by segmental windows while, on the first floor, all the bays were fenestrated by round headed windows. At roof level there was a

cornice In architecture, a cornice (from the Italian ''cornice'' meaning "ledge") is generally any horizontal decorative moulding that crowns a building or furniture element—for example, the cornice over a door or window, around the top edge of a ...

, a

parapet A parapet is a barrier that is an extension of the wall at the edge of a roof, terrace, balcony, walkway or other structure. The word comes ultimately from the Italian ''parapetto'' (''parare'' 'to cover/defend' and ''petto'' 'chest/breast'). Whe ...

and a central pediment containing a

roundel A roundel is a circular disc used as a symbol. The term is used in heraldry, but also commonly used to refer to a type of national insignia used on military aircraft, generally circular in shape and usually comprising concentric rings of differ ...

inscribed with the town

coat of arms A coat of arms is a heraldry, heraldic communication design, visual design on an escutcheon (heraldry), escutcheon (i.e., shield), surcoat, or tabard (the latter two being outer garments). The coat of arms on an escutcheon forms the central ele ...

. Internally, the principal room was a courtroom on the first floor. Following significant population growth, largely associated with farming, the area became a

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 ...

in 1885: the courtroom was adapted to serve as a council chamber for the new council. Visitors to the town hall in the 20th century included the former

Prime Minister of Australia The prime minister of Australia is the head of government of the Commonwealth of Australia. The prime minister heads the executive branch of the Australian Government, federal government of Australia and is also accountable to Parliament of A ...

Sir Robert Menzies ''Sir'' is a formal honorific address in English for men, derived from Sire in the High Middle Ages. Both are derived from the old French "Sieur" (Lord), brought to England by the French-speaking Normans, and which now exist in French only as p ...

, who toured the area shortly after he was appointed

Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports The Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports is a ceremonial official in the United Kingdom. The post dates from at least the 12th century, when the title was Keeper of the Coast, but may be older. The Lord Warden was originally in charge of the Cinqu ...

in 1966. The town hall continued to serve as the headquarters of the borough council for much of the 20th century, but ceased to be the local seat of government when the enlarged Folkestone and Hythe District Council was formed in 1974. Instead, it became the meeting place of New Romney Town Council. A local history museum was also established in the town hall: items acquired for the collection included an example of the flag of the Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports, a set of imperial measures, typically held by local authorities to ensure tradesmen comply with the

Weights and Measures Act 1824 Weights and measures acts are acts of the British Parliament determining the regulation of weights and measures. It also refers to similar royal and parliamentary acts of the Kingdoms of England and Scotland and the medieval Welsh states. T ...

, and a mid-19th century iron box containing the minute books and other important documents of the former borough.

References

{{reflist Government buildings completed in 1702 City and town halls in Kent Grade II listed buildings in Kent