Silsden Town Hall is a municipal building in Kirkgate, Silsden, West Yorkshire, England. The town hall is the meeting place of Silsden Town Council.

History

The building was originally commissioned as a permanent home for the local mechanics' institute; lectures for interested students had been held on an informal basis in the Red Lion Inn before the trustees of the institute decided to find a permanent home. The site they selected, which was made available for a nominal sum by the previous owner,

Lord Hothfield Baron Hothfield, of Hothfield in the County of Kent, is a title in the Peerage of the United Kingdom. It was created in 1881 for Sir Henry Tufton, 2nd Baronet, who was appointed Lord Lieutenant of Westmorland the same year and who also served bri ...

, was adjacent to the churchyard of St. James' Church, Kirkgate. The foundation stone for the new building was laid by Lord Hothfield, whose seat was at

Skipton Castle Skipton Castle is a Grade I Listed medieval castle in Skipton, North Yorkshire, England. It was built in 1090 by Robert de Romille, a Norman baron, and has been preserved for over 931 years. History The castle was originally a motte and bai ...

, in December 1893. It was designed in the Victorian style, built with

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 at a cost of £2,000 and was officially opened by Lord Hothfield in October 1894. The design involved an asymmetrical main frontage with eight bays facing onto Kirkgate; the central section of three bays featured a doorway in the right hand bay on the ground floor; there was a Venetian window in the centre bay with

oculi An oculus (; ) is a circular opening in the center of a dome or in a wall. Originating in antiquity, it is a feature of Byzantine and Neoclassical architecture. It is also known as an '' œil-de-boeuf'' from the French, or simply a "bull's-e ...

flanked by

Ionic order The Ionic order is one of the three canonic orders of classical architecture, the other two being the Doric and the Corinthian. There are two lesser orders: the Tuscan (a plainer Doric), and the rich variant of Corinthian called the composite or ...

columns on the first floor and an open segmental pediment above. Internally, the principal room was the main hall which featured an ornate wooden roof structure. After the popularity of mechanics' institutes reduced in the late 19th century, Silsden Urban District Council, which had been formed in 1894, took over the management of the building and converted it into a town hall in 1907. A council chamber was established on the ground floor. A book of remembrance, commemorating the lives of local service personnel who had died in the First World War, was put on display in the town hall after the war. The building continued to serve as a meeting place for Silsden Urban District Council for much of the 20th century but ceased to be the local seat of government after the enlarged City of Bradford Metropolitan District Council was formed in 1974. A multi-use service hub to support small businesses was established in the town hall in September 2008. Following the completion of a programme of refurbishment works costing £300,000, Silsden Library moved from Wesley Place into the former council chamber on the ground floor of the town hall in November 2013. The works also involved the removal of a false ceiling in the main hall, so exposing the original ornate wooden roof structure. A community group, known as The Friends of Silsden Town Hall, was established in 2014 with responsibility for promoting the use of the town hall through pantomimes, exhibitions, presentations and other events. The new arrangements, which were formalised when trustees took a long lease on the building in April 2019, also saw the town hall returning to municipal use as the meeting place of Silsden Town Council.

References

{{City and town halls in West Yorkshire, state=collapsed Government buildings completed in 1894 City and town halls in West Yorkshire Silsden