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

Kettering Kettering is a market and industrial town in North Northamptonshire, England. It is located north of London and north-east of Northampton, west of the River Ise, a tributary of the River Nene. The name means "the place (or territory) of ...

Northamptonshire Northamptonshire (; abbreviated Northants.) is a county in the East Midlands of England. In 2015, it had a population of 723,000. The county is administered by two unitary authorities: North Northamptonshire and West Northamptonshire. It is ...

, England. The structure, which was used as a cinema for much of the 20th century, currently accommodates a restaurant.

History

In the mid-19th century, a group of local businessmen decided to form a company, known as the "Town Hall and 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 exchange. Such trade was common in towns ...

for the town. The site they chose was on the east side of the Market Place. The building was designed by

Edmund Francis Law Edmund Francis Law, usually referred to as 'E. F. Law', (26 April 1810 – 14 April 1882, in Northampton) FRIBA was an English architect during the 19th century, notable for a large number of projects, particularly restorations, in the ...

in the

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

, built in red brick with stone facings at a cost of £2,950 and was completed in 1853. The design involved a symmetrical main frontage of three bays facing onto the Market Place. The central bay featured a square headed doorway flanked 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. Typically deployed in symmetric pairs, an individual bracket may be identified as a 'left' or ' ...

supporting a balcony with

wrought iron Wrought iron is an iron alloy with a very low carbon content (less than 0.08%) in contrast to that of cast iron (2.1% to 4%). It is a semi-fused mass of iron with fibrous slag inclusions (up to 2% by weight), which give it a wood-like "grain" ...

railings. The outer bays on the ground floor and all three bays on the first floor were fenestrated by round headed

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 stone

voussoir A voussoir () is a wedge-shaped element, typically a stone, which is used in building an arch or vault. Although each unit in an arch or vault is a voussoir, two units are of distinct functional importance: the keystone and the springer. The ...

s 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, all ...

. The bays were flanked by rusticated stone

pilaster In classical architecture, a pilaster is an architectural element used to give the appearance of a supporting column and to articulate an extent of wall, with only an ornamental function. It consists of a flat surface raised from the main wal ...

s supporting stone

hood mould In architecture, a hood mould, hood, label mould (from Latin ''labia'', lip), drip mould or dripstone, is an external moulded projection from a wall over an opening to throw off rainwater, historically often in form of a ''pediment''. This mouldin ...

s placed above the first-floor windows. 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 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 ...

inscribed with the words "Corn Exchange", a

modillion A modillion is an ornate bracket, more horizontal in shape and less imposing than a corbel. They are often seen underneath a cornice which it helps to support. Modillions are more elaborate than dentils (literally translated as small teeth). Al ...

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 ...

and a

parapet A parapet is a barrier that is an extension of the 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/breast'). ...

. Internally, the principal rooms were the market hall on the ground floor, which was long and wide, and an assembly hall on the first floor which was used as a town hall, as a venue for

county court A county court is a court based in or with a jurisdiction covering one or more county, counties, which are administrative divisions (subnational entities) within a country, not to be confused with the medieval system of ''county courts'' held by t ...

hearings and as a drill hall for the 9th Battalion of the Northamptonshire Rifle Volunteers. The use of the building as a corn exchange declined significantly in the wake of the

Great Depression of British Agriculture The Great Depression of British Agriculture occurred during the late nineteenth century and is usually dated from 1873 to 1896. Contemporaneous with the global Long Depression, Britain's agricultural depression was caused by the dramatic fall in g ...

in the late 19th century. Following significant population growth, largely associated with the status of Kettering as a market town, the area became a

local government district The districts of England (also known as local authority districts or local government districts to distinguish from unofficial city districts) are a level of subnational division of England used for the purposes of local government. As the st ...

in 1872, governed by a local board. At its second meeting in September 1872 the board decided to rent rooms at the corn exchange for future meetings, and later also established an office for its surveyor in the building. Such local government districts were reconstituted as urban districts in 1894. In 1904 the council moved its meeting place to the Stamford Road School (now the William Knibb Centre). The council's offices also outgrew the limited space at the corn exchange and were subsequently distributed to various buildings across the town. The corn exchange, which had already been used as a venue for showings of

silent film A silent film is a film with no synchronized Sound recording and reproduction, 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) ...

s from February 1903, was brought under the management of Leon Vint as "Vint's Electric Palace" in October 1909. It was then rebranded as the "Palace Theatre" in June 1912 and as the "Hippodrome Cinema" in November 1917. The company that had developed the building got into financial difficulties in the 1920s and was wound up in November 1926. The building was subsequently converted for use as an auction house. By the early 21st century, it was home to a fitness centre, a betting office and a gift shop, but in 2014, it was converted for use as a restaurant, named the "Kino Lounge" to recall the former use of the building as a cinema. The comedian,

Mark Watson Mark Andrew Watson (born 13 February 1980) is a British comedian and novelist. Early life Watson was born in Bristol to a Welsh mother and English father. He has younger twin sisters and a brother, Paul. He attended Bristol Grammar School, ...

, put on an impromptu performance in front of the building in September 2022.

References

{{reflist Commercial buildings completed in 1853 Buildings and structures in Kettering

History

See also

References