The Old Shirehall was a municipal facility in Market Square,

Shrewsbury Shrewsbury ( , also ) is a market town, civil parish, and the county town of Shropshire, England, on the River Severn, north-west of London; at the 2021 census, it had a population of 76,782. The town's name can be pronounced as either 'Sh ...

Shropshire Shropshire (; alternatively Salop; abbreviated in print only as Shrops; demonym Salopian ) is a landlocked historic county in the West Midlands region of England. It is bordered by Wales to the west and the English counties of Cheshire to th ...

. It was demolished in 1971 to make way for a retail and commercial centre.

History

Shrewsbury Guildhall and Market Hall 1796

The building was commissioned to replace an earlier shire hall on the site which had been designed by

John Hiram Haycock John Hiram Haycock (1759-1830) was an architect who built many notable buildings in Shropshire and Montgomeryshire. He was the son of William Haycock (1725-1802), a carpenter and joiner of Shrewsbury. He was apprenticed to his father and became a ...

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 ...

and completed in 1785. After finding that the earlier building was suffering from

fissure A fissure is a long, narrow crack opening along the surface of Earth. The term is derived from the Latin word , which means 'cleft' or 'crack'. Fissures emerge in Earth's crust, on ice sheets and glaciers, and on volcanoes. Ground fissure A ...

s due to its inadequate foundations in the context of poor ground conditions, county leaders decided to procure a new building on the same site. The new building, which was designed by

Sir Robert Smirke Sir Robert Smirke (1 October 1780 – 18 April 1867) was an English architect, one of the leaders of Greek Revival architecture, though he also used other architectural styles. As architect to the Board of Works, he designed several major ...

, 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 built by Birch and Sons at a cost of £12,000, was completed in March 1837. The design involved a symmetrical main frontage with nine bays facing onto Market Square; the central section, which slightly projected forward, featured a doorway on the ground floor and pedimented windows on the first and second floors. Internally, the principal rooms were the two courtrooms (one for the crown court and one for the

nisi prius ''Nisi prius'' () (Latin: "unless before") is a historical term in English law. In the 19th century, it came to be used to denote generally all legal actions tried before judges of the King's Bench Division and in the early twentieth century for ac ...

court); there was also a "Great Room", which measured long, wide and high, for public gatherings. The building was badly damaged in a fire, which was incompetently tacked by the local fire brigade, in November 1880 and was subsequently rebuilt internally. The building continued to be used as a facility for dispensing justice but, following the implementation of the

Local Government Act 1888 Local may refer to: Geography and transportation * Local (train), a train serving local traffic demand * Local, Missouri, a community in the United States * Local government, a form of public administration, usually the lowest tier of administrat ...

, which established county councils in every county, it also became the meeting place of Salop County Council. The local borough guildhall (i.e. borough council meeting place) was incorporated into the shirehall under a long-standing arrangement which pre-dated Smirke's structure. Council meetings were held in one of the courtrooms. The borough council moved out to Newport House in Dogpole in 1917 leaving the county council on their own. After the county council moved to the new Shirehall in Abbey Foregate in 1966, the building remained vacant and deteriorating until it was demolished to make way for a new retail and commercial centre known as Princess House in 1971. Works of art in the old Shirehall included a portrait of General Lord Hill by

Sir William Beechey Sir William Beechey (12 December 175328 January 1839) was an English portraitist during the golden age of British painting. Early life Beechey was born at Burford, Oxfordshire, on 12 December 1753, the son of William Beechey, a solicitor, an ...

and a portrait of Admiral Sir Edward Owen by Richard Evans. Both these paintings were subsequently transferred to the

Shrewsbury Museum and Art Gallery Shrewsbury Museum and Art Gallery was founded in 1835 as the Museum of the Shropshire and North Wales Natural History and Antiquarian Society Society in Dogpole, Shrewsbury, England. In 1853 the collections were moved to Vaughan's Mansion on Coll ...

References

{{reflist Buildings and structures in Shrewsbury Government buildings completed in 1837 County halls in England Demolished buildings and structures in England Buildings and structures demolished in 1971