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

Fakenham Fakenham is a market town and civil parish in Norfolk, England. It is situated on the River Wensum, about north-west of Norwich. The town is at the junction of several local roads, including the A148 from King's Lynn to Cromer, the A1067 to N ...

Norfolk Norfolk ( ) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in England, located in East Anglia and officially part of the East of England region. It borders Lincolnshire and The Wash to the north-west, the North Sea to the north and eas ...

, England. The structure, which is currently used as a cinema, 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 early 1850s, a group of local businessmen decided to form a private company, known as the "Fakenham Corn Exchange and Public Rooms 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 investors included

Thomas Coke, 2nd Earl of Leicester Thomas William Coke, 2nd Earl of Leicester (26 December 1822 – 24 January 1909), known as Viscount Coke from 1837 to 1842, was a British peerage, British peer. Background Leicester was the son of Thomas Coke, 1st Earl of Leicester (seventh ...

, whose seat was a

Holkham Hall Holkham Hall ( or ) is an 18th-century English country house, country house near the village of Holkham, Norfolk, England, constructed in the Neo-Palladian style for Thomas Coke, 1st Earl of Leicester (fifth creation), Thomas Coke, 1st Earl of ...

, and who took a personal interest in the project. The site they selected, in the centre of the Market Place, had been occupied by a market cross and sessions hall which dated back to 1649. The sessions hall was arcaded on the ground floor, so that markets could be held; it also had an assembly room, which was used as a school, on the first floor, but it was demolished in 1801. The current building was designed by

John Brown John Brown most often refers to: *John Brown (abolitionist) (1800–1859), American who led an anti-slavery raid on Harpers Ferry, Virginia, in 1859 John Brown or Johnny Brown may also refer to: Academia * John Brown (educator) (1763–1842), Ir ...

Norwich Norwich () is a cathedral city and district of the county of Norfolk, England, of which it is the county town. It lies by the River Wensum, about north-east of London, north of Ipswich and east of Peterborough. The population of the Norwich ...

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

ashlar Ashlar () is a cut and dressed rock (geology), stone, worked using a chisel to achieve a specific form, typically rectangular in shape. The term can also refer to a structure built from such stones. Ashlar is the finest stone masonry unit, a ...

stone dressings at a cost of £4,000 and was completed in 1855. The design involved a symmetrical main frontage of five bays facing west onto Old Post Office Street. It was originally fenestrated by five

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 ...

s 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, window cills and

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 ...

on each floor. The corners, which were rounded, contained doorways with

fanlight A fanlight is a form of lunette window (transom window), often semicircular or semi-elliptical in shape, with glazing (window), glazing bars or tracery sets radiating out like an open Hand fan, fan. It is placed over another window or a doorway, ...

s 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 and

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 side elevations, of three bays each, featured two-bay projections, with rounded corners, which were fenestrated by pairs of round-headed windows. At roof level, there was heavy cornice, supported by brackets, and a

parapet A parapet is a barrier that is an upward extension of a wall at the edge of a roof, terrace, balcony, walkway or other structure. The word comes ultimately from the Italian ''parapetto'' (''parare'' 'to cover/defend' and ''petto'' 'chest/brea ...

. Internally, as well as the main hall, which was used by traders, there was a courtroom for the magistrates and a library. 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, the building was converted into a cinema, capable of seating 700 people, in 1930. The cinema was branded as the "Central Cinema" in 1937 and a plaque, inscribed with the inscription "Central", was installed above a new doorway in the central bay. After serving as the headquarters of the local

Home Guard Home guard is a title given to various military organizations at various times, with the implication of an emergency or reserve force raised for local defense. The term "home guard" was first officially used in the American Civil War, starting ...

during the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

, the cinema closed in 1976. The building was re-purposed as a bingo hall in the late 1970s but became vacant in the mid-1990s. After an extensive programme of refurbishment works, carried out to a design by Nicholas Hills, it was then reopened as the "Hollywood Cinema" in July 2000. It subsequently changed ownership in 2009, and, again, in 2017.

References

{{reflist Commercial buildings completed in 1855 Cinemas in Norfolk Fakenham Grade II listed buildings in Norfolk

History

See also

References