The Shire Hall is a municipal building in The Sands, Appleby-in-Westmorland, Cumbria, England. The shire hall, which is currently used as a dental surgery and business centre, is a Grade II listed building.

History

The assize hearings for the County of Westmorland were held in the then-county town of Appleby, at the

Castle A castle is a type of fortified structure built during the Middle Ages predominantly by the nobility or royalty and by military orders. Scholars debate the scope of the word ''castle'', but usually consider it to be the private fortified r ...

until 1670, and then at the Moot Hall until 1778. However, in the early 1770s, the justices decided to commission a dedicated courthouse and the local lord of the manor,

Sir James Lowther James Lowther, 1st Earl of Lonsdale (5 August 173624 May 1802) was an English country landowner and politician who sat in the House of Commons for 27 years from 1757 to 1784, when he was raised to the Peerage of Great Britain as Earl of Lonsdale. ...

, agreed to make land available on Bongate (now known as The Sands). The new building was designed by Lowther's agent, Daniel Benn, in the vernacular style, built in rubble masonry 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 completed in 1778. The design involved an asymmetrical main frontage of seven bays facing onto The Sands. There was a short flight of steps, running the full width of the frontage, in front of the building. The four bays on left contained tall doorways, while the three bays to the right contained tall windows. The first floor was fenestrated by square-shaped windows. All the windows incorporated

ashlar Ashlar () is finely dressed (cut, worked) stone, either an individual stone that has been worked until squared, or a structure built from such stones. Ashlar is the finest stone masonry unit, generally rectangular cuboid, mentioned by Vitruv ...

stone surrounds and glazing bars. Internally, the principal room was the main courtroom. A gaol was built at the same time on a site to the rear of the courthouse but it was taken out of use in 1878. The building was extended to the right, i.e. to the southeast, to create an extra bay in 1814. The building continued to serve as the assize court until the abolition of the assize courts under the

Courts Act 1971 The Courts Act 1971 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, the purpose of which was to reform and modernise the courts system of England and Wales. It established the Crown Court, introduced the posts of circuit judge and recorde ...

. It then served as the local magistrates court, until the court hearings were transferred in March 1998. The building was subsequently refurbished and converted for use as a dental surgery and business centre.

References

{{reflist Government buildings completed in 1778 Court buildings in England Appleby-in-Westmorland Grade II listed buildings in Cumbria

History

See also

References