Newtownstewart Town Hall is a municipal structure in Townhall Street,

Newtownstewart Newtownstewart is a village and townland of in County Tyrone, Northern Ireland. It is overlooked by hills called Bessy Bell and Mary Gray and lies on the River Strule below the confluence with its tributary the Owenkillew. It is situated in th ...

County Tyrone County Tyrone (; ) is one of the six Counties of Northern Ireland, counties of Northern Ireland, one of the nine counties of Ulster and one of the thirty-two traditional Counties of Ireland, counties of Ireland. It is no longer used as an admini ...

, Northern Ireland. The structure, which has been converted for use by the local amateur boxing club, is a Grade B2

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 first building on the site was the home of Major Jones Crawford who saw action with the 12th (East Suffolk) Regiment of Foot at the Siege of Seringapatam in Southern India in 1799 during the

Fourth Anglo-Mysore War The Fourth Anglo-Mysore War was a conflict in South India between the Kingdom of Mysore against the British East India Company and the Hyderabad Deccan in 1798–99. This was the final conflict of the four Anglo-Mysore Wars. The British captured ...

. In 1879, the house was demolished and the site redeveloped by a local ironmonger, Bernard Gillespie, who saw an opportunity to establish a municipal building in the town. The new building 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 ...

, built in brick with a

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 and was completed in 1880. The design involved a symmetrical main frontage with three bays facing onto Townhall Street; the ground floor was fenestrated by a central square-headed

casement window A casement window is a window that is attached to its frame by one or more hinges at the side. They are used singly or in pairs within a common frame, in which case they are hinged on the outside. Casement windows are often held open using a cas ...

which was flanked by openings containing recessed doorways with rectangular

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 on either side. The first floor featured a prominent

Venetian window A Venetian window (also known as a Serlian window) is a large tripartite window which is a key element in Palladian architecture. Although Sebastiano Serlio (1475–1554) did not invent it, the window features largely in the work of the Italian a ...

incorporating

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

hood mould In architecture, a hood mould, hood, label mould (from Latin ''labia'', lip), drip mould or dripstone, is an external moulded projection from a wall over an opening to throw off rainwater, historically often in form of a ''pediment''. This mouldin ...

s. Below the window was a panel inscribed with the words "Town Hall" in raised lettering, whilst in the open

gable A gable is the generally triangular portion of a wall between the edges of intersecting roof pitches. The shape of the gable and how it is detailed depends on the structural system used, which reflects climate, material availability, and aesth ...

above there was an

oculus Oculus (a term from Latin ''oculus'', meaning 'eye'), may refer to the following Architecture * Oculus (architecture), a circular opening in the centre of a dome or in a wall Arts, entertainment, and media * ''Oculus'' (film), a 2013 American ...

inscribed with the works "Erected by B. Gillespie 1880". At that time, Gillespie's name also appeared on a plate above one of the doors. The building became the venue for the regular

petty session Courts of petty session, established from around the 1730s, were local courts consisting of magistrates, held for each petty sessional division (usually based on the county divisions known as hundreds) in England, Wales, and Ireland. The session ...

hearings: cases heard by the magistrates during these hearings included a trial in 1919, when several individuals were charged with attacking two British soldiers in the village of

Ardstraw Ardstraw (from ga, Ard Sratha (hill or height of the holm or strath)) is a small village, townland and civil parish in County Tyrone, Northern Ireland, three miles northwest of Newtownstewart. In the 2001 Census it had a population of 222 peopl ...

. After 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 ...

, the building was acquired by the Gallagher family: it was used for concerts, dances and theatrical performances for much of the 20th century although the judicial use of the building ended in 1964 when petty session hearings in Newtownstewart were abolished. After the building became the home of the Two Castles Amateur Boxing Club in 2012, extensive refurbishment works were carried out to update the building: these works included the installation of new toilets, changing rooms and kitchen facilities.

References

{{Government buildings in Northern Ireland Government buildings completed in 1880 City and town halls in Northern Ireland Grade B2 listed buildings Civil parish of Ardstraw