Trowbridge Town Hall is a municipal building in Market Street,

Trowbridge Trowbridge ( ) is the county town of Wiltshire, England, on the River Biss in the west of the county. It is near the border with Somerset and lies southeast of Bath, 31 miles (49 km) southwest of Swindon and 20 miles (32 km) southe ...

Wiltshire Wiltshire (; abbreviated Wilts) is a historic and ceremonial county in South West England with an area of . It is landlocked and borders the counties of Dorset to the southwest, Somerset to the west, Hampshire to the southeast, Gloucestershire ...

, England. The town hall, which was the headquarters of Trowbridge 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

After significant population growth, largely associated with the cloth industry, a

local board of health Local boards or local boards of health were local authorities in urban areas of England and Wales from 1848 to 1894. They were formed in response to cholera epidemics and were given powers to control sewers, clean the streets, regulate environmenta ...

was established in Trowbridge in 1864. In the 1880s, the local board decided that the town needed a municipal building, and a wealthy cloth merchant, Sir William Roger Brown, offered to pay for it to celebrate the

Golden Jubilee of Queen Victoria The Golden Jubilee of Queen Victoria was celebrated on 20 and 21 June 1887 to mark the 50th anniversary of Queen Victoria's accession on 20 June 1837. It was celebrated with a Thanksgiving Service at Westminster Abbey, and a banquet to which ...

. The site the board acquired was then occupied by a large private house known as "The Limes". The foundation stone for the new building was laid by Mrs Brown on 21 June 1887,Plaque on the left of the doorway to the town hall when she declared: The new building was designed in the Jacobethan style. It was built in

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 £20,000 and was opened by the Duchess of Albany on 14 June 1889. The design involved an asymmetrical main frontage with three bays facing onto Market Street; the central bay featured an arched doorway flanked by

brackets A bracket is either of two tall fore- or back-facing punctuation marks commonly used to isolate a segment of text or data from its surroundings. Typically deployed in symmetric pairs, an individual bracket may be identified as a 'left' or 'r ...

supporting a

balustrade A baluster is an upright support, often a vertical moulded shaft, square, or lathe-turned form found in stairways, parapets, and other architectural features. In furniture construction it is known as a spindle. Common materials used in its con ...

; there was a pair of

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 ...

windows on the first floor and a tall

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 ...

clock tower Clock towers are a specific type of structure which house a turret clock and have one or more clock faces on the upper exterior walls. Many clock towers are freestanding structures but they can also adjoin or be located on top of another buildi ...

with a spire above. In the left hand bay there was a giant round headed window with

tracery Tracery is an architecture, architectural device by which windows (or screens, panels, and vaults) are divided into sections of various proportions by stone ''bars'' or ''ribs'' of Molding (decorative), moulding. Most commonly, it refers to the s ...

on the first floor and a shaped

gable A gable is the generally triangular portion of a wall between the edges of intersecting roof pitches. The shape of the gable and how it is detailed depends on the structural system used, which reflects climate, material availability, and aesth ...

above, while to the right there was a large

oriel window An oriel window is a form of bay window which protrudes from the main wall of a building but does not reach to the ground. Supported by corbels, bracket (architecture), brackets, or similar cantilevers, an oriel window is most commonly found pro ...

with a shaped gable above. Internally, the principal rooms were the courtroom, which was used as a venue for

petty session Courts of petty session, established from around the 1730s, were local courts consisting of magistrates, held for each petty sessional division (usually based on the county divisions known as hundreds) in England, Wales, and Ireland. The session ...

s, the council chamber and the ballroom. The building was also equipped with police cells for people facing trial and an area to the rear of the town hall was landscaped to create a "Sensory Garden". On 6 August 1889, soon after the creation of

Wiltshire County Council Wiltshire County Council (established in 1889) was the county council of Wiltshire in the South West of England, an elected local Government body responsible for most local government services in the county. As a result of the 2009 restructur ...

, one of its earliest meetings took place at Trowbridge Town Hall. In 1894, the parish of Trowbridge became an

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, and in November 1917

King George V George V (George Frederick Ernest Albert; 3 June 1865 – 20 January 1936) was King of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions, and Emperor of India, from 6 May 1910 until his death in 1936. Born during the reign of his grandmother Que ...

and Queen Mary visited the town hall on a visit to the area. The building continued to serve as the headquarters of the urban district council for much of the 20th century, but ceased to be the local seat of government after the enlarged

West Wiltshire District Council West or Occident is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from east and is the direction in which the Sun sets on the Earth. Etymology The word "west" is a Germanic word passed into some R ...

was formed in new offices at Bradley Road in 1974. The ballroom was used for local dances and musical events, and in the 1960s performers appearing there included the

rock bands A musical ensemble, also known as a music group or musical group, is a group of people who perform instrumental and/or vocal music, with the ensemble typically known by a distinct name. Some music ensembles consist solely of instrumentalists, ...

Rod Stewart and the Soul Agents, in December 1964,

The Who The Who are an English rock band formed in London in 1964. Their classic lineup consisted of lead singer Roger Daltrey, guitarist and singer Pete Townshend, bass guitarist and singer John Entwistle, and drummer Keith Moon. They are considered ...

, in April 1965, and

Small Faces Small Faces were an English rock band from London, founded in 1965. The group originally consisted of Steve Marriott, Ronnie Lane, Kenney Jones and Jimmy Winston, with Ian McLagan replacing Winston as the band's keyboardist in 1966. The band w ...

in August 1965. After 1974, the town hall belonged to West Wiltshire District Council, and then from 2009 to its successor

Wiltshire Council Wiltshire Council is a council for the unitary authority of Wiltshire (excluding the separate unitary authority of Swindon) in South West England, created in 2009. It is the successor authority to Wiltshire County Council (1889–2009) and the ...

, which considered disposing of it. It continued to be used as a magistrates' court until 2003 and was also used as the venue for coroners' inquests into the deaths of military personnel. In 2011, a group of residents formed the Trowbridge Town Hall Trust to help restore the building, and since then it has been used for exhibitions and community events. Works of art in the town hall include a bust by Edward Sheppard depicting the benefactor, Sir William Roger Brown, as well as portrait of him by an unknown artist.

References

{{reflist Government buildings completed in 1889 City and town halls in Wiltshire Trowbridge Grade II listed buildings in Wiltshire