Westhoughton Town Hall is a municipal building in Market Street,

Westhoughton Westhoughton ( ) is a town and civil parish in the Metropolitan Borough of Bolton, Greater Manchester, England, southwest of Bolton, east of Wigan and northwest of Manchester.Greater Manchester Greater Manchester is a metropolitan county and combined authority, combined authority area in North West England, with a population of 2.8 million; comprising ten metropolitan boroughs: City of Manchester, Manchester, City of Salford, Salford ...

, England. The town hall is the meeting place of Westhoughton Town Council.

History

The

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 ...

, which was formed in 1872, initially established its offices at the junction of Market Street and Wigan Road. After significant industrial growth, particularly associated with the number of

cotton mill A cotton mill is a building that houses spinning (textiles), spinning or weaving machinery for the production of yarn or cloth from cotton, an important product during the Industrial Revolution in the development of the factory system. Althou ...

s in the town, the area 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 ...

in 1894. In this context, civic leaders decided to procure a dedicated town hall: the site they selected had been open land on the north side of Market Street just south of Glebe Mill. Foundation stones for the new building were laid by the chairman of Westhoughton Urban District Council, W. E. Tonge, and by the senior member, Roger Walker, on 18 April 1903. It was designed by Bradshaw and Gass in the

Renaissance style Renaissance architecture is the European architecture of the period between the early 15th and early 16th centuries in different regions, demonstrating a conscious revival and development of certain elements of Ancient Greece, ancient Greek and ...

, built with

terracotta Terracotta, terra cotta, or terra-cotta (; ; ), in its material sense as an earthenware substrate, is a clay-based ceramic glaze, unglazed or glazed ceramic where the pottery firing, fired body is porous. In applied art, craft, construction, a ...

facings from

Ruabon Ruabon ( cy, Rhiwabon ) is a village and community in Wrexham County Borough, Wales. The name comes from ''Rhiw Fabon'', ''rhiw'' being the Welsh word for "slope" or "hillside" and ''Fabon'' being a mutation from St Mabon, the original church ...

in Wales at a cost of £4,922 and was officially opened on 7 December 1904. The design involved an asymmetrical main frontage with eleven bays facing onto Market Street; the central part of the left-hand section, which slightly projected forward, featured a porch with a pair of

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 supporting an

entablature An entablature (; nativization of Italian , from "in" and "table") is the superstructure of moldings and bands which lies horizontally above columns, resting on their capitals. Entablatures are major elements of classical architecture, and ...

with a date stone and a carved

cornice In architecture, a cornice (from the Italian ''cornice'' meaning "ledge") is generally any horizontal decorative moulding that crowns a building or furniture element—for example, the cornice over a door or window, around the top edge of a ...

; there was a

casement window A casement window is a window that is attached to its frame by one or more hinges at the side. They are used singly or in pairs within a common frame, in which case they are hinged on the outside. Casement windows are often held open using a cas ...

on the first floor and an open

pediment Pediments are gables, usually of a triangular shape. Pediments are placed above the horizontal structure of the lintel, or entablature, if supported by columns. Pediments can contain an overdoor and are usually topped by hood moulds. A pedimen ...

containing an

oculus Oculus (a term from Latin ''oculus'', meaning 'eye'), may refer to the following Architecture * Oculus (architecture), a circular opening in the centre of a dome or in a wall Arts, entertainment, and media * ''Oculus'' (film), a 2013 American ...

above. The fourth bay from the right featured an iron balcony on the first floor and a

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 an

octagon In geometry, an octagon (from the Greek ὀκτάγωνον ''oktágōnon'', "eight angles") is an eight-sided polygon or 8-gon. A '' regular octagon'' has Schläfli symbol and can also be constructed as a quasiregular truncated square, t, whi ...

al bell

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 ...

and

dome A dome () is an architectural element similar to the hollow upper half of a sphere. There is significant overlap with the term cupola, which may also refer to a dome or a structure on top of a dome. The precise definition of a dome has been a m ...

above. Internally, the principal room was the council chamber. A Carnegie library was erected behind the town hall and opened on 24 March 1906. A plaque to commemorate the lives of some of the 344 men and boys who had died in the Pretoria Pit disaster was commissioned by the Bolton & District Cricket Association and fixed at the south west corner of the town hall following the tragedy which took place on 21 December 1910. The bell was removed from the bell turret, as it was causing damage to the terracotta facings, in 1947. The building continued to serve as a meeting place for Westhoughton Urban District Council for much of the 20th century but ceased to be the local seat of government after the enlarged

Bolton Metropolitan Borough Council Bolton Council, also called Bolton Metropolitan Borough Council is the local authority of the Metropolitan Borough of Bolton in Greater Manchester, England. It is a Metropolitan Borough Council, one of ten in Greater Manchester and one of 36 in t ...

was formed in 1974. The town hall was restored to a municipal role when it became the meeting place of Westhoughton Town Council when it was established in 1985. A plaque to commemorate the life of the locally-born actor, Robert Shaw, was unveiled by the mayor, Councillor Brian Clare, outside the town hall on 3 August 1996. A programme of refurbishment works cost £2.5 million to a design by Good and Tillotson was announced by Bolton Council in May 2018. However, although the building was fully vacated in March 2020, Bolton Council announced in June 2020 that the works would not proceed until wider plans for the regeneration of the town centre had been considered and approved.

References

{{reflist Government buildings completed in 1904 City and town halls in Greater Manchester Government buildings with domes Westhoughton