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Old Town Hall, Torquay
The Old Town Hall is a former municipal building in Union Street, Torquay, Devon, England. The building, which was the headquarters of Torquay Borough Council until 1911, is a Grade II listed building. History The new local board of health for Tormoham, as the area was then known, treated the commissioning of a town hall as a key priority after it was formed in 1850. The building was designed by a Mr Dixon in the Italianate style, built in limestone and was completed in June 1852. The design featured a three-stage bell tower on the corner of Abbey Road and Union Street; there was a round headed window in the first stage, twin lancet windows in the second stage and, originally, a triple-lancet arrangement of bell louvres in the third stage, with a modillioned cornice and a shallow hipped roof above. On the Union Street elevation, the central section of three bays, which projected forward, featured a wide opening on the ground floor, a pedimented Venetian window with a balustra ...
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Torquay
Torquay ( ) is a seaside town in Devon, England, part of the unitary authority area of Torbay. It lies south of the county town of Exeter and east-north-east of Plymouth, on the north of Tor Bay, adjoining the neighbouring town of Paignton on the west of the bay and across from the fishing port of Brixham. The town's economy, like Brixham's, was initially based upon fishing and agriculture, but in the early 19th century it began to develop into a fashionable seaside resort. Later, as the town's fame spread, it was popular with Victorian society. Renowned for its mild climate, the town earned the nickname the English Riviera. The writer Agatha Christie was born in the town and lived at Ashfield in Torquay during her early years. There is an "Agatha Christie Mile", a tour with plaques dedicated to her life and work. The poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning lived in the town from 1837 to 1841 on the recommendation of her doctor in an attempt to cure her of a disease which is ...
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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 construction are wood, stone, and less frequently metal and ceramic. A group of balusters supporting a handrail, coping, or ornamental detail are known as a balustrade. The term baluster shaft is used to describe forms such as a candlestick, upright furniture support, and the stem of a brass chandelier. The term banister (also bannister) refers to a baluster or to the system of balusters and handrail of a stairway. It may be used to include its supporting structures, such as a supporting newel post. Etymology According to the ''Oxford English Dictionary'', "baluster" is derived through the french: balustre, from it, balaustro, from ''balaustra'', "pomegranate flower" rom a resemblance to the swelling form of the half-open flower (' ...
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City And Town Halls In Devon
A city is a human settlement of notable size.Goodall, B. (1987) ''The Penguin Dictionary of Human Geography''. London: Penguin.Kuper, A. and Kuper, J., eds (1996) ''The Social Science Encyclopedia''. 2nd edition. London: Routledge. It can be defined as a permanent and densely settled place with administratively defined boundaries whose members work primarily on non-agricultural tasks. Cities generally have extensive systems for housing, transportation, sanitation, utilities, land use, production of goods, and communication. Their density facilitates interaction between people, government organisations and businesses, sometimes benefiting different parties in the process, such as improving efficiency of goods and service distribution. Historically, city-dwellers have been a small proportion of humanity overall, but following two centuries of unprecedented and rapid urbanization, more than half of the world population now lives in cities, which has had profound consequ ...
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Government Buildings Completed In 1852
A government is the system or group of people governing an organized community, generally a state. In the case of its broad associative definition, government normally consists of legislature, executive, and judiciary. Government is a means by which organizational policies are enforced, as well as a mechanism for determining policy. In many countries, the government has a kind of constitution, a statement of its governing principles and philosophy. While all types of organizations have governance, the term ''government'' is often used more specifically to refer to the approximately 200 independent national governments and subsidiary organizations. The major types of political systems in the modern era are democracies, monarchies, and authoritarian and totalitarian regimes. Historically prevalent forms of government include monarchy, aristocracy, timocracy, oligarchy, democracy, theocracy, and tyranny. These forms are not always mutually exclusive, and ...
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Synagogue
A synagogue, ', 'house of assembly', or ', "house of prayer"; Yiddish: ''shul'', Ladino: or ' (from synagogue); or ', "community". sometimes referred to as shul, and interchangeably used with the word temple, is a Jewish house of worship. Synagogues have a place for prayer (the main sanctuary and sometimes smaller chapels), where Jews attend religious Services or special ceremonies (including Weddings, Bar Mitzvahs or Bat Mitzvahs, Confirmations, choir performances, or even children's plays), have rooms for study, social hall(s), administrative and charitable offices, classrooms for religious school and Hebrew school, sometimes Jewish preschools, and often have many places to sit and congregate; display commemorative, historic, or modern artwork throughout; and sometimes have items of some Jewish historical significance or history about the Synagogue itself, on display. Synagogues are consecrated spaces used for the purpose of Jewish prayer, study, assembly, ...
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Torquay Town Hall
Torquay Town Hall is a municipal building in Castle Circus in Torquay, Devon, England. The building, which is the meeting place of Torbay Council, is a Grade II listed building. History The first municipal structure in Torquay was the old town hall in Union Street which was completed in June 1852. After finding that the old town hall was too small for their needs, civic leaders decided to procure a new building; the site they selected had previously formed part of the grounds of St Mary Magdalene's Church. The foundation stone for the new building was laid by the mayor, Councillor John Smerdon, on 14 February 1906. It was designed by Thomas Davison in the Edwardian Baroque style and built in two phases: the first phase, to the south west, which included the Carnegie library, was built by R. E. Narracott of Stoke Gabriel and completed in 1907 and the second phase, to the north east, which included the civic rooms, was built by R. Wilkins of Bristol and was completed in 1911. T ...
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John Warner & Sons
John Warner and Sons was a metalworks and bellfoundry based in various locations in the UK, established in 1739 and dissolved in 1949. Previous businesses A company was founded by Jacob Warner, a Quaker, in 1739 and originally produced water pumps, fire engines, and beer engines. His sons, John & Tomson Warner, then formed a separate metal working business at a house known as Three Bells and a Star in Wood Street, Cheapside; by 1763 they were casting bells and later moved to Fore Street, Cripplegate. In 1782 the Warner brothers dissolved their partnership, John moved to Fleet Street and Tomson remained in Cripplegate. Notable bells Warners had a large output of bells, and Warner bells can be found throughout the world. Some of their notable bells including the clock chime at the Houses of Parliament, were cast at their foundry in Jewin Crescent, Cripplegate. The larger Big Ben was cast at Norton, near Stockton-on-Tees and later had to be re-cast by the Whitechapel Bell Foundr ...
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Municipal Borough
Municipal boroughs were a type of local government district which existed in England and Wales between 1835 and 1974, in Northern Ireland from 1840 to 1973 and in the Republic of Ireland from 1840 to 2002. Broadly similar structures existed in Scotland from 1833 to 1975 with the reform of royal burghs and creation of police burghs. England and Wales Municipal Corporations Act 1835 Boroughs had existed in England and Wales since mediæval times. By the late Middle Ages they had come under royal control, with corporations established by royal charter. These corporations were not popularly elected: characteristically they were self-selecting oligarchies, were nominated by tradesmen's guilds or were under the control of the lord of the manor. A Royal Commission was appointed in 1833 to investigate the various borough corporations in England and Wales. In all 263 towns were found to have some form of corporation created by charter or in existence by prescription. The majorit ...
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Village Lock-up
A village lock-up is a historic building once used for the temporary detention of people in England and Wales, mostly where official prisons or criminal courts were beyond easy walking distance. Lockups were often used for the confinement of drunks, who were usually released the next day, or to hold people being brought before the local magistrate. The archetypal form comprises a small room with a single door and a narrow slit window, grating or holes. Most lock-ups feature a tiled or stone-built dome or spire as a roof and are built from brick, stone and/or timber. Such a room was built in many shapes; many are round, which gives rise to a sub-description: the punishment or village round-house. Village lock-ups, though usually freestanding, were often attached to walls, tall pillar/tower village crosses or incorporated into other buildings. Varying in architectural strength and ornamentation, they were all built to perform the same function. Nicknames and forms They have acqu ...
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Bracket (architecture)
A bracket is an architectural element: a structural or decorative member. It can be made of wood, stone, plaster, metal, or other media. It projects from a wall, usually to carry weight and sometimes to "...strengthen an angle". A corbel or console are types of brackets. In mechanical engineering a bracket is any intermediate component for fixing one part to another, usually larger, part. What makes a bracket a bracket is that it is intermediate between the two and fixes the one to the other. Brackets vary widely in shape, but a prototypical bracket is the L-shaped metal piece that attaches a shelf (the smaller component) to a wall (the larger component): its vertical arm is fixed to one (usually large) element, and its horizontal arm protrudes outwards and holds another (usually small) element. This shelf bracket is effectively the same as the architectural bracket: a vertical arm mounted on the wall, and a horizontal arm projecting outwards for another element to be attached o ...
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Sash Window
A sash window or hung sash window is made of one or more movable panels, or "sashes". The individual sashes are traditionally paned windows, but can now contain an individual sheet (or sheets, in the case of double glazing) of glass. History The oldest surviving examples of sash windows were installed in England in the 1670s, for example at Ham House.Louw, HJ, ''Architectural History'', Vol. 26, 1983 (1983), pp. 49–72, 144–15JSTOR The invention of the sash window is sometimes credited, without conclusive evidence, to Robert Hooke. Others see the sash window as a Dutch invention. H.J. Louw believed that the sash window was developed in England, but concluded that it was impossible to determine the exact inventor. The sash window is often found in Georgian and Victorian houses, and the classic arrangement has three panes across by two up on each of two sash, giving a ''six over six'' panel window, although this is by no means a fixed rule. Innumerable late Victorian and ...
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Venetian Window
A Venetian window (also known as a Serlian window) is a large tripartite window which is a key element in Palladian architecture. Although Sebastiano Serlio (1475–1554) did not invent it, the window features largely in the work of the Italian architect Andrea Palladio (1508–1580) and is almost a trademark of his early career. The true Palladian window is an elaborated version. Overview The Venetian window consists of an arched central light, symmetrically flanked by two shorter sidelights. Each sidelight is flanked by two columns or pilasters and topped by a small entablature. The entablatures serve as imposts supporting the semicircular arch that tops the central light. In the library at Venice, Sansovino varied the design by substituting columns for the two inner pilasters. To describe its origin as being either Palladian or Venetian is not accurate; the motif was first used by Donato Bramante and later mentioned by Serlio in his seven-volume architectural book ' ...
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