The Council House is a former municipal building in Chester Road North,
Brownhills
Brownhills is a historic market and industrial town in the Metropolitan Borough of Walsall of the West Midlands county, England. The town is located south of Cannock Chase and close to the large Chasewater reservoir, it is northeast of Walsa ...
,
West Midlands, England. The building, which is now used as a health centre, is a locally listed building.
History
The
local board of health
A local board of health (or simply a ''local board'') was a local authority in urban areas of England and Wales from 1848 to 1894. They were formed in response to cholera epidemics and were given powers to control sewers, clean the streets, regulat ...
, which was formed in 1877, initially held their meetings in the local school board,
but, after finding this arrangement unsatisfactory, decided to commission its own offices in 1880.
The site they chose was open land adjacent to a bridge across the
South Staffordshire line. The building was designed by the board's surveyor, John Siddalls, in the
Elizabethan style
Elizabethan architecture refers to buildings in a local style of Renaissance architecture built during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I of England from 1558 to 1603. The style is very largely confined to secular buildings, especially the large ...
, built by Messrs T. and E. Cresswell in red brick with stone dressings at a cost of £2,700 and was completed in 1882.
The design involved an asymmetrical main frontage with five bays facing onto Chester Road North. The end bays, which slightly projected forward, featured
porch
A porch (; , ) is a room or gallery located in front of an entrance to a building. A porch is placed in front of the façade of a building it commands, and forms a low front. Alternatively, it may be a vestibule (architecture), vestibule (a s ...
es with arched doorways flanked by
Doric order
The Doric order is one of the three orders of ancient Greek and later Roman architecture; the other two canonical orders were the Ionic and the Corinthian. The Doric is most easily recognized by the simple circular capitals at the top of t ...
columns supporting
canopies; there were
casement window
A casement window is a window that is attached to its frame by one or more hinges at the side. They are used singly or in pairs within a common frame, in which case they are hinged on the outside. Casement windows are often held open using a c ...
s on the first floor and
pavilion
In architecture, ''pavilion'' has several meanings;
* It may be a subsidiary building that is either positioned separately or as an attachment to a main building. Often it is associated with pleasure. In palaces and traditional mansions of Asia ...
roofs above. The second bay on the left was fenestrated by pairs of casement windows on both floors with a stone arch and a gable above. The other two bays were fenestrated by pairs of casement windows on the ground floor and by single casement windows on the first floor. Internally, the principal rooms were the board room, the assembly room, the courtroom and various offices for board officials.
[
In the late 19th century, the courtroom was used as the venue for the local ]petty session
Courts of petty session, established from around the 1730s, were local courts consisting of magistrates, held for each petty sessional division (usually based on the county divisions known as hundreds) in England, Wales, and Ireland. The session ...
hearings. A horse drawn fire engine was stored in a yard behind the building and a fire bell, with which to summon the local firemen, was installed under a canopy on the east side of the building.[
Following implementation of the ]Local Government Act 1894
The Local Government Act 1894 ( 56 & 57 Vict. c. 73) was an act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that reformed local government in England and Wales outside the County of London. The act followed the reforms carried out at county leve ...
, the area became an urban district
An urban district is a division generally managed by a local government. It may also refer to a city district, district, urban area or quarter
Specific urban districts in some countries include:
* Urban districts of Denmark
* Districts of Germa ...
, with the building as its headquarters, in 1894. A projecting clock, financed out of funds collected to celebrate the coronation of George V and Mary
The coronation of George V and his wife, Mary, as king and queen of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions took place at Westminster Abbey, London, on Thursday 22 June 1911. This was the second of four such events held during the ...
, was designed and manufactured by W. F. Evans and Sons of Handsworth and installed on the front of the building in 1911.Festival of Britain
The Festival of Britain was a national exhibition and fair that reached millions of visitors throughout the United Kingdom in the summer of 1951.
Labour Party cabinet member Herbert Morrison was the prime mover; in 1947 he started with the ...
in 1951.[
The building continued to serve as the headquarters of the urban district council for much of the 20th century, but ceased to be the local seat of government when the enlarged Aldridge-Brownhills Urban District Council was formed in ]Aldridge
Aldridge is a town in the Metropolitan Borough of Walsall in the West Midlands, England. It is historically, a village that was part of Staffordshire until 1974. The town is from Brownhills, from Walsall, from Sutton Coldfield and from ...
in 1966.[ In the early 21st century, after many years of neglect, the building was refurbished and the site redeveloped by a partnership of Walsall Council and a local developer, Matrix Realty Group. The works, which involved the creation of a new public library, a computer centre and a health centre, known as the Park View Centre, as well as the refurbishment of the clock, were completed in June 2006.][
]
References
{{reflist
Government buildings completed in 1882
City and town halls in the West Midlands (county)
Buildings and structures in Walsall
Brownhills