Clare Town Hall is a municipal building in the town of

Clare, Suffolk Clare is a market town and civil parish on the north bank of the River River Stour, Suffolk, Stour in the West Suffolk District, West Suffolk district, in the county of Suffolk, England. Clare is in southwest Suffolk, from Bury St Edmunds and ...

, in England. The building is currently used as a community events venue.

History

The first building on the site was a structure known as the

market cross A market cross, or in Scots, a mercat cross, is a structure used to mark a market square in market towns, where historically the right to hold a regular market or fair was granted by the monarch, a bishop or a baron. History Market crosses ...

which dated from the 16th century. There were two rooms on the first floor of the building, which were endowed by the local tradesman and philanthropist, William Cadge of Bochards Farm, and made available for use as a free school in 1668. By the early 1830s, the market cross was dilapidated, and civic leaders decided to commission a

corn exchange A corn exchange is a building where merchants trade grains. The word "corn" in British English denotes all cereal grains, such as wheat and barley; in the United States these buildings were called grain exchanges. Such trade was common in towns ...

for the town. The new building, designed by James Fenner, was completed in 1838. The use of the building as a corn exchange declined significantly in the wake of the Great Depression of British Agriculture in the late 19th century. In the early 20th century, civic leaders decided that the old corn exchange should be demolished and replaced by a

town hall In local government, a city hall, town hall, civic centre (in the UK or Australia), guildhall, or municipal hall (in the Philippines) is the chief administrative building of a city, town, or other municipality. It usually houses the city o ...

for community use, as part of the celebrations for the coronation of

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 Death and state funeral of George V, his death in 1936. George w ...

. The structure was rebuilt in brick with a

cement render Cement render or cement plaster is the application of a mortar mix of sand and cement, (optionally lime) and water to brick, concrete, stone, or mud brick. It is often textured, colored, or painted after application. It is generally used on ...

finish, to a design by Percy Monroe Beaumont, at cost £1,317, and then re-opened as a town hall in 1913. The design involved a symmetrical main frontage of three bays facing onto Market Hill. The outer bays contained doorways flanked by

pilaster In architecture, a pilaster is both a load-bearing section of thickened wall or column integrated into a wall, and a purely decorative element in classical architecture which gives the appearance of a supporting column and articulates an ext ...

s surmounted 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. They come in four main pairs of shapes, as given in the box to the right, which also gives their n ...

supporting

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

s. The central bay was fenestrated by five-part

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 sup ...

ed windows on both floors and there was extensive

half-timber Timber framing () and "post-and-beam" construction are traditional methods of building with heavy Beam (structure), timbers, creating structures using squared-off and carefully fitted and Woodworking joints, joined timbers with joints secure ...

ing installed in the gable above. St Edmundsbury Borough Council have described the structure as "a unique building... of a traditional style with the front elevation of render and dark stained timber with a large overhanging gable". It is the only building on Market Hill in the town which is not listed. Internally, the principal room was an assembly hall, which was long and wide, featured a sprung dance floor, and had seating capacity of 300 people; there were various rooms for council meetings. The building was primarily used for parish level meetings; the local rural district council was based at Stonehall in Nethergate Street. Extensive alterations to main frontage, including the replacement of the doorways in the outer bays with a new opening in the central bay, were introduced when the building was refurbished in 1988. Since then it has continued to be used for craft fairs and other community events.

References

{{reflist Clare, Suffolk City and town halls in Suffolk Government buildings completed in 1913