Pudsey Town Hall is a municipal building in Robin Lane,

Pudsey Pudsey is a market town in the City of Leeds, City of Leeds Borough in West Yorkshire, England. It is located midway between Bradford, Bradford city centre and Leeds city centre. Historic counties of England, Historically in the West Riding of ...

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 town hall was the headquarters of Pudsey Urban District Council from 1912 to 1974.

History

The building was originally commissioned as a new home for the local mechanics' institute which had been founded in 1847; it left its initial home in Church Lane in around 1865 and then rented short-term accommodation in several locations before the board of the institute decided to find a permanent home. The site they selected was a vacant plot located between two

cooperative store A consumers' co-operative is an enterprise owned by consumers and managed democratically and that aims at fulfilling the needs and aspirations of its members. Such co-operatives operate within the market system, independently of the state, as a fo ...

s which was acquired for £1,600. The foundation stone for the new institute building was laid by the former chairman of the local board, William Dibb Scales of Grove House, on 6 October 1879. It was designed by Hope and Jardine of

Bradford Bradford is a city and the administrative centre of the City of Bradford district in West Yorkshire, England. The city is in the Pennines' eastern foothills on the banks of the Bradford Beck. Bradford had a population of 349,561 at the 2011 ...

and was officially opened by the local

member of parliament A member of parliament (MP) is the representative in parliament of the people who live in their electoral district. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, this term refers only to members of the lower house since upper house members of ...

Herbert Gladstone Herbert John Gladstone, 1st Viscount Gladstone, (7 January 1854 – 6 March 1930) was a British Liberal politician. The youngest son of William Ewart Gladstone, he was Home Secretary from 1905 to 1910 and Governor-General of the Union of South ...

, on 10 November 1880. The design included a prominent square tower at the junction of Lowtown and Robin Lane. The Lowtown elevation of the tower featured an arched doorway with engaged

Corinthian order The Corinthian order (Greek: Κορινθιακός ρυθμός, Latin: ''Ordo Corinthius'') is the last developed of the three principal classical orders of Ancient Greek architecture and Roman architecture. The other two are the Doric order ...

columns and a carved tympanum, while its Robin Lane elevation featured a

bartizan A bartizan (an alteration of ''bratticing''), also called a guerite, ''garita'', or ''échauguette'', or spelled bartisan, is an overhanging, wall-mounted turret projecting from the walls of late medieval and early-modern fortifications from the ...

; there were

sash window A sash window or hung sash window is made of one or more movable panels, or "sashes". The individual sashes are traditionally paned window (architecture), paned windows, but can now contain an individual sheet (or sheets, in the case of double gla ...

s on the upper floors on both elevations and there was also originally a spire on the top of the tower. Internally, the principal rooms were a large public hall and lecture theatre, both on the first floor. An extension was built in 1900 to accommodate the local

grammar school A grammar school is one of several different types of school in the history of education in the United Kingdom and other English-speaking countries, originally a school teaching Latin, but more recently an academically oriented secondary school ...

but the school relocated to Richardshaw Lane in January 1911. The departure of the school and dwindling attendances at the institute precipitated financial difficulties and, in late 1911, the institute sought a purchaser for the building: the local council for Pudsey, which had been awarded

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 ...

status in 1900, acquired the building and converted it into a town hall in February 1912. The new accommodation included a council chamber and a courtroom. The young men of Pudsey were called up at the town hall and undertook their medical examinations there during 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 continued to serve as the headquarters of Pudsey Borough Council for much of the 20th century although the spire, which had become unstable, had to be removed in 1965. The building ceased to be local seat of government when the enlarged

Leeds City Council Leeds City Council is the local authority of the City of Leeds in West Yorkshire, England. It is a metropolitan district council, one of five in West Yorkshire and one of 36 in the metropolitan counties of England, and provides the majority of l ...

was formed in 1974. Later use of the building was limited: there were occasional meetings of the local area management committee of Leeds City Council and, although a One Stop Centre was established in the building in the early years of the 21st century, the centre moved to Pudsey Library in May 2016. The town hall continued to be used, briefly, as a base for the local integrated Health and Social Care teams, but fell completely vacant by 2020.

References

{{City and town halls in West Yorkshire Government buildings completed in 1880 City and town halls in West Yorkshire Pudsey