Rhyl Town Hall
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Rhyl Town Hall ( cy, Neuadd y Dref Rhyl) is a municipal structure in Wellington Road in
Rhyl Rhyl (; cy, Y Rhyl, ) is a seaside town and community (Wales), community in Denbighshire, Wales. The town lies within the Historic counties of Wales, historic boundaries of Flintshire (historic), Flintshire, on the north-east coast of Wales at ...
,
Denbighshire Denbighshire ( ; cy, Sir Ddinbych; ) is a county in the north-east of Wales. Its borders differ from the historic county of the same name. This part of Wales contains the country's oldest known evidence of habitation – Pontnewydd (Bontnewy ...
, Wales. The town hall, which was the headquarters of Rhyl 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 first municipal offices in Rhyl were established in the High Street in 1849. After they were appointed in 1852, the new improvement commissioners decided to procure more substantial offices on a site on the northwest side of Wellington Road: the new offices were designed by
Thomas Mainwaring Penson Thomas Mainwaring Penson (1818–64) was an English surveyor and architect. His father and grandfather, who were both named Thomas Penson, were also surveyors and architects. His grandfather Thomas Penson (c. 1760–1824) worked from an office ...
and was completed in 1856. After this facility also proved inadequate, the commissioners decided to demolish the existing structure and to construct a new building on the same site. The foundation stone for the new building was laid by the
Lord Lieutenant of Flintshire This is a list of people who have served as Lord Lieutenant of Flintshire. Since 1802, all Lord Lieutenants have also been Custos Rotulorum of Flintshire. The office was abolished on 31 March 1974, and was replaced by the Lord Lieutenant of Clwy ...
, Hugh Robert Hughes, on 15 December 1873. It was designed by Wood and Turner of
Barrow-in-Furness Barrow-in-Furness is a port town in Cumbria, England. Historically in Lancashire, it was incorporated as a municipal borough in 1867 and merged with Dalton-in-Furness Urban District in 1974 to form the Borough of Barrow-in-Furness. In 2023 the ...
in the
Gothic style Gothic or Gothics may refer to: People and languages *Goths or Gothic people, the ethnonym of a group of East Germanic tribes **Gothic language, an extinct East Germanic language spoken by the Goths **Crimean Gothic, the Gothic language spoken b ...
, built in
Penmaenmawr Penmaenmawr (, ) is a town and community in Conwy County Borough, Wales, which was formerly in the parish of Dwygyfylchi and the traditional county of Caernarfonshire. It is on the North Wales coast between Conwy and Llanfairfechan and was an i ...
stone by a local contractor, J. Rhydwen Jones, at a cost of £6,000, and officially opened by Hughes, when he returned on 11 October 1876. The original design involved an asymmetrical main frontage of eight bays facing onto Wellington Road with the left hand bay topped with a
mansard roof A mansard or mansard roof (also called a French roof or curb roof) is a four-sided gambrel-style hip roof characterised by two slopes on each of its sides, with the lower slope, punctured by dormer windows, at a steeper angle than the upper. The ...
to form a
pavilion In architecture, ''pavilion'' has several meanings: * It may be a subsidiary building that is either positioned separately or as an attachment to a main building. Often it is associated with pleasure. In palaces and traditional mansions of Asia ...
; the central bay, which was projected forward, featured a gabled porch on the ground floor, a plain panel and a blind traceried window on the first floor and, above that, a tall clock tower with corner
turret Turret may refer to: * Turret (architecture), a small tower that projects above the wall of a building * Gun turret, a mechanism of a projectile-firing weapon * Objective turret, an indexable holder of multiple lenses in an optical microscope * Mi ...
s, a
spire A spire is a tall, slender, pointed structure on top of a roof of a building or tower, especially at the summit of church steeples. A spire may have a square, circular, or polygonal plan, with a roughly conical or pyramidal shape. Spires are ...
and a
weather vane A wind vane, weather vane, or weathercock is an instrument used for showing the direction of the wind. It is typically used as an architectural ornament to the highest point of a building. The word ''vane'' comes from the Old English word , m ...
. The bays to the left and the right of the central bay, which were recessed on the first floor, contained casement windows on the ground floor and traceried windows on the first floor, while the left hand bay contained
mullion A mullion is a vertical element that forms a division between units of a window or screen, or is used decoratively. It is also often used as a division between double doors. When dividing adjacent window units its primary purpose is a rigid supp ...
ed windows on both floors. Internally, the principal room was the main hall. After significant population growth, largely associated with the seaside tourism industry, the area was advanced to the status of
urban district Urban district may refer to: * District * Urban area * Quarter (urban subdivision) * Neighbourhood Specific subdivisions in some countries: * Urban districts of Denmark * Urban districts of Germany * Urban district (Great Britain and Ireland) (hist ...
with the town hall as its headquarters in 1895. In 1897, the filmmaker, Arthur Cheetham, took a lease on the main hall and started giving monthly performances of his own films; this arrangement continued until 1900 when he stopped all performances at the town hall in anticipation of the opening his first all-year-round cinema in Rhyl in 1906. The Afro-American educator and activist, Hallie Quinn Brown, gave a talk in the town hall in January 1898. The building was extended by five extra bays to the right in a similar style to incorporate a new Carnegie library in 1906; the extension was topped with a mansard roof to form a pavilion thereby creating symmetry with the pavilion on the left. The building served as the headquarters of Rhyl Urban District Council for much of the 20th century but ceased to be local seat of government when the enlarged Rhuddlan Borough Council was formed in 1974. The
miniature A miniature is a small-scale reproduction, or a small version. It may refer to: * Portrait miniature, a miniature portrait painting * Miniature art, miniature painting, engraving and sculpture * Miniature (chess), a masterful chess game or probl ...
steam locomotive A steam locomotive is a locomotive that provides the force to move itself and other vehicles by means of the expansion of steam. It is fuelled by burning combustible material (usually coal, oil or, rarely, wood) to heat water in the locomot ...
, ''Billie'', which had been manufactured by
Albert Barnes & Co Albert Barnes & Co were Rhyl based manufacturers of miniature railway, miniature steam locomotives. A number of them are preserved at the Rhyl Miniature Railway. Albert Barnes was the owner of Rhyl Amusements Ltd. Six 4-4-2 locomotives were bui ...
for the Rhyl Miniature Railway in 1922, was acquired by Rhyl Town Council in 1978 and displayed in the town hall until it was relocated to the Albert Barnes Room at the miniature railway's central station in 2007. The town hall continued to serve as an events venue and became an approved location for marriages and civil partnership ceremonies; the register office for North Denbighshire relocated to the town hall in May 2018.


References

{{reflist Government buildings completed in 1876 City and town halls in Wales Rhyl Grade II listed buildings in Denbighshire