The Corn Exchange is a commercial building in the Market Place in

Alford, Lincolnshire Alford is a market town and civil parish in the East Lindsey district of Lincolnshire, England, at the foot of the Lincolnshire Wolds, which form an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. The population was recorded as 3,459 in the 2011 United Kin ...

, England. The structure, which is currently used as a community events venue, is a Grade II

listed building In the United Kingdom, a listed building is a structure of particular architectural or historic interest deserving of special protection. Such buildings are placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Hi ...

History

In the mid-19th century, a group of local businessmen decided to form a company, to be known as the "Alford Corn Exchange Company", to finance and commission a purpose-built

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 site they selected, on the south side of the Market Place, was leased to a local ironmonger and gunsmith, Robert Mason: the

lord of the manor Lord of the manor is a title that, in Anglo-Saxon England and Norman England, referred to the landholder of a historical rural estate. The titles date to the English Feudalism, feudal (specifically English feudal barony, baronial) system. The ...

Robert Nisbet-Hamilton Robert Adam Nisbet-Hamilton (1804 – 9 June 1877), known as Robert Dundas until 1835 and as Robert Christopher between 1835 and 1855, was a British Conservative Party politician. He served as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster under th ...

, whose seat was at Bloxholm Hall, agreed to donate a freehold interest in the site to the directors of the new company. The building was designed by Henry Goddard in the

Italianate style The Italianate style was a distinct 19th-century phase in the history of Classical architecture. Like Palladianism and Neoclassicism, the Italianate style combined its inspiration from the models and architectural vocabulary of 16th-century Ita ...

, built in red brick with stone dressings at a cost of £1,400 and was officially opened on 5 February 1857. The design involved a symmetrical main frontage of three bays facing onto the Market Place. The central bay, which was slightly projected forward, featured a segmentally headed doorway with a rusticated surround flanked by pairs of

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, decorated by coloured tiles, and 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 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 ...

and a

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 ...

. The outer bays were fenestrated on the ground floor by tri-partite windows with brackets supporting entablatures and cornices. The bays on the first floor were fenestrated by round headed windows with

architrave In classical architecture, an architrave (; , also called an epistyle; ) is the lintel or beam, typically made of wood or stone, that rests on the capitals of columns. The term can also apply to all sides, including the vertical members, ...

s, supported by distinctive scrolls, and with

keystones A keystone (or capstone) is the wedge-shaped stone at the apex of a masonry arch or typically round-shaped one at the apex of a vault. In both cases it is the final piece placed during construction and locks all the stones into position, allo ...

. There was a date stone above the central window. At the corners there were

quoin Quoins ( or ) are masonry blocks at the corner of a wall. Some are structural, providing strength for a wall made with inferior stone or rubble, while others merely add aesthetic detail to a corner. According to one 19th-century encyclopedia, ...

s, and, at roof level, there was a cornice surmounted by a centrally-placed carved

coat of arms A coat of arms is a heraldry, heraldic communication design, visual design on an escutcheon (heraldry), escutcheon (i.e., shield), surcoat, or tabard (the last two being outer garments), originating in Europe. The coat of arms on an escutcheon f ...

. The architectural historian,

Nikolaus Pevsner Sir Nikolaus Bernhard Leon Pevsner (30 January 1902 – 18 August 1983) was a German-British art historian and architectural historian best known for his monumental 46-volume series of county-by-county guides, ''The Buildings of England'' (195 ...

, was unimpressed by the design and described it as "drab". 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. Instead it was used for local community events and, although Robert Nisbet-Hamilton had originally insisted that it must not be used for religious or political events, that restriction was lifted by his descendent, Lady Mary Georgina Constance Christopher Nisbet Hamilton Ogilby, in 1902. It was subsequently used for lectures, dances, and balls, and, from 1913, it also showed

silent film A silent film is a film without synchronized recorded sound (or more generally, no audible dialogue). Though silent films convey narrative and emotion visually, various plot elements (such as a setting or era) or key lines of dialogue may, w ...

s. Following local government re-organisation in 1974, it also became the offices and meeting place of the local town council. A community interest company, known as the "Alford Corn Exchange and Community Group", took responsibility for the management and ownership of the building in 2014. The group subsequently commissioned an extensive programme of refurbishment works, which involved the installation of a fully licensed bar, a café area and a kitchen, as well as the restoration of the fabric of the building.

References

{{reflist Commercial buildings completed in 1857 Alford, Lincolnshire Grade II listed buildings in Lincolnshire Alford

History

See also

References