County Hall is a municipal building in Morpeth,

Northumberland Northumberland ( ) is a ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in North East England, on the Anglo-Scottish border, border with Scotland. It is bordered by the North Sea to the east, Tyne and Wear and County Durham to the south, Cumb ...

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Northwestern Europe, off the coast of European mainland, the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...

. It is the offices and meeting place of

Northumberland County Council Northumberland County Council is the Local government in England, local authority for the non-metropolitan county of Northumberland in North East England. Since 2009 it has been a Unitary authorities of England, unitary authority, having also ...

. The current building was completed in April 1981, after the county hall was moved from the old county hall in Newcastle. A statue of a Viking Warrior stands outside the building and was moved there from Doxford Hall.

History

For much of the 20th century County Hall was situated within an exclave of Northumberland (in the

Moot Hall A moot hall is a meeting or assembly building, traditionally to decide local issues. In Anglo-Saxon England, a low ring-shaped Earthworks (engineering), earthwork served as a moot hill or moot mound, where the elders of the Hundred (county subdiv ...

precincts) within the county borough of

Newcastle upon Tyne Newcastle upon Tyne, or simply Newcastle ( , Received Pronunciation, RP: ), is a City status in the United Kingdom, cathedral city and metropolitan borough in Tyne and Wear, England. It is England's northernmost metropolitan borough, located o ...

; the area became part of the county of

Tyne and Wear Tyne and Wear () is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in North East England. It borders Northumberland to the north and County Durham to the south, and the largest settlement is the city of Newcastle upon Tyne. The county is ...

in 1974 and was thus extraterritorial to the county of

. After deciding that this arrangement was unsatisfactory, county leaders chose to procure a new purpose-built county headquarters within the territorial limits of the county: the site selected in Morpeth had previously been agricultural land. The foundation stone for the new building was laid by

Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother Elizabeth Angela Marguerite Bowes-Lyon (4 August 1900 – 30 March 2002) was Queen of the United Kingdom and the Dominions of the British Commonwealth from 11 December 1936 to 6 February 1952 as the wife of King George VI. She was al ...

on 6 April 1979. It was designed in the modern style and was opened on 21 April 1981. The design for the three-storey building involved continuous bands of glazing with red brick above and below:

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 ...

described it as a "spreading building of informal style in brick". A statue of a Viking Warrior, which had been sculpted by Margaret Wrightson in 1925 and placed in the grounds of Doxford Hall, was relocated to Morpeth at that time of the construction of County Hall.

Queen Elizabeth II Elizabeth II (Elizabeth Alexandra Mary; 21 April 19268 September 2022) was Queen of the United Kingdom and other Commonwealth realms from 6 February 1952 until Death and state funeral of Elizabeth II, her death in 2022. ...

, accompanied by the

Duke of Edinburgh Duke of Edinburgh, named after the capital city of Scotland, Edinburgh, is a substantive title that has been created four times since 1726 for members of the British royal family. It does not include any territorial landholdings and does not pr ...

and the Duchess of Northumberland had lunch at County Hall on 26 July 2001. In October 2014 county leaders announced proposals to move the county headquarters to

Ashington Ashington is a town and civil parish in Northumberland, England, with a population of 27,864 at the 2011 Census. It was once a centre of the coal mining industry. The town is north of Newcastle upon Tyne, west of the A189 and bordered to the ...

. However, after a change in political leadership, the new county leaders announced, in May 2017, that the proposals would be abandoned. Instead a phased programme of refurbishment works were announced with a project to repair the external fabric of the building approved in February 2018, a project to repair back-of-house office areas approved in November 2018 and a project to repair the reception area approved in March 2020.

References

{{Morpeth, Northumberland Buildings and structures in Northumberland Morpeth, Northumberland M Government buildings completed in 1981