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

Cirencester Cirencester ( , ; see #Pronunciation, below for more variations) is a market town and civil parish in the Cotswold District of Gloucestershire, England. Cirencester lies on the River Churn, a tributary of the River Thames. It is the List of ...

Gloucestershire Gloucestershire ( , ; abbreviated Glos.) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South West England. It is bordered by Herefordshire to the north-west, Worcestershire to the north, Warwickshire to the north-east, Oxfordshire ...

, England. The structure, which is used as a shopping arcade and 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 private company, known as the "Corn Hall Company", to finance and 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 site they selected, on the south side of the Market Place, was occupied by the Boothall, where wool trading had been conducted since the 16th century. The directors secured a 500-year lease over the site from the owner,

Henry Bathurst, 4th Earl Bathurst Henry George Bathurst, 4th Earl Bathurst (24 February 179025 May 1866), styled as Lord Apsley from 1794 to 1834, was a British Peerage, peer and Tory politician. Background and education Born at Apsley House, he was the eldest son of Henry Bathu ...

, whose seat was at Cirencester Park. The building was designed by James Medland and Alfred Maberly 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

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 and was completed in 1863. The design involved a symmetrical main frontage of five bays facing onto the Market Place. The central bay featured a segmentally-headed opening with a

hood mould In architecture, a hood mould, hood, label mould (from Latin , 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 moulding can be ...

and a keystone flanked by short

Corinthian order The Corinthian order (, ''Korinthiakós rythmós''; ) is the last developed and most ornate of the three principal classical orders of Ancient Greek architecture and Ancient Roman architecture, Roman architecture. The other two are the Doric or ...

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 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 ...

and a

wrought iron Wrought iron is an iron alloy with a very low carbon content (less than 0.05%) in contrast to that of cast iron (2.1% to 4.5%), or 0.25 for low carbon "mild" steel. Wrought iron is manufactured by heating and melting high carbon cast iron in an ...

balcony A balcony (from , "scaffold") is a platform projecting from the wall of a building, supported by columns or console brackets, and enclosed with a balustrade, usually above the ground floor. They are commonly found on multi-level houses, apartme ...

. The other bays on the ground floor were fenestrated by segmentally-headed tri-partite windows with hood moulds and keystones, while the first floor was fenestrated by round-headed sash windows flanked by pilasters supporting architraves and keystones, and the second floor was fenestrated by segmentally-headed sash windows with architraves and keystones. The heads of the first floor windows contained stone carvings by the sculptor, James Forsyth, depicting musical instruments, a ship's anchor, a wheatsheaf, fine arts and a phoenix. At roof level, there was a

frieze In classical architecture, the frieze is the wide central section of an entablature and may be plain in the Ionic order, Ionic or Corinthian order, Corinthian orders, or decorated with bas-reliefs. Patera (architecture), Paterae are also ...

, 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 (architecture), cornice which helps to support them. Modillions are more elaborate than dentils (literally transl ...

ed cornice and a balustraded

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, the principal room was the main hall, which was accessed down an angled corridor to the left from the rear of the entrance hall. 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. It was subsequently used as a community events venue and hosted lectures by the local school of art as well as performances by visiting amateur and professional theatrical companies. It was used as a reception centre for evacuees, before hosted a boxing match to raise money for Wings for Victory Week in May 1943, 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 building was acquired by Cirencester Urban District Council in 1951 and the main hall then became the local civil defence headquarters for the town, while the second floor was used as a club for the local branch of the

Royal Air Forces Association The Royal Air Forces Association, also known as RAF Association or RAFA, is a British registered charity. It provides care and support to serving and retired members of the Air Forces of the British Commonwealth, and to their dependents. The ...

. It went on to become a popular concert venue: the locally-born drummer,

Cozy Powell Cozy Powell (born Colin Trevor Flooks; 29 December 1947 – 5 April 1998) was an English drummer who made his name with major rock bands and artists such as The Jeff Beck Group, Rainbow, Michael Schenker Group, Gary Moore, Graham Bonnet, B ...

, performed there with

rock band ''Rock Band'' is a series of rhythm games first released in 2007 and developed by Harmonix. Based on their previous development work from the Guitar Hero, ''Guitar Hero'' series, the main ''Rock Band'' games have players use game controllers mod ...

, ''The Corals'', on a weekly basis in the mid-1960s. In 1975, the building hosted the first of a series of regular craftsman's markets selling handmade goods to tourists. It was acquired by a developer, Wildmoor Properties, in 2006. An extensive programme of refurbishment works, undertaken by at a cost of £2 million, was completed in November 2008. The musicians,

Brian May Sir Brian Harold May (born 19 July 1947) is an English musician, songwriter, record producer, animal welfare activist and astrophysics, astrophysicist. He achieved global fame as the lead guitarist and backing vocalist of the rock band Queen ...

and

Tony Iommi Anthony Frank Iommi Jr. (born 19 February 1948) is an English musician. He co-founded the pioneering Heavy metal music, heavy metal band Black Sabbath, and was the band's guitarist, leader, primary composer, and sole continuous member for over ...

, visited the Corn Hall to unveil a plaque in Powell's honour in January 2016.

References

{{reflist Commercial buildings completed in 1863 Cirencester Grade II listed buildings in Gloucestershire

History

See also

References