The Old Shirehall was a municipal facility in Market Square,

Shrewsbury Shrewsbury ( , ) is a market town and civil parish in Shropshire (district), Shropshire, England. It is sited on the River Severn, northwest of Wolverhampton, west of Telford, southeast of Wrexham and north of Hereford. At the 2021 United ...

Shropshire Shropshire (; abbreviated SalopAlso used officially as the name of the county from 1974–1980. The demonym for inhabitants of the county "Salopian" derives from this name.) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in the West M ...

. It was demolished in 1971 to make way for a retail and commercial centre.

History

Shrewsbury Guildhall and Market Hall 1796

The building was commissioned to replace an earlier shire hall on the site which had been designed by John Hiram Haycock in the

neoclassical style Neoclassicism, also spelled Neo-classicism, emerged as a Western cultural movement in the decorative and visual arts, literature, theatre, music, and architecture that drew inspiration from the art and culture of classical antiquity. Neoclassici ...

and completed in 1785. After finding that the earlier building was suffering from

fissure A fissure is a long, narrow crack opening along the surface of Earth. The term is derived from the Latin word , which means 'cleft' or 'crack'. Fissures emerge in Earth's crust, on ice sheets and glaciers, and on volcanoes. Ground fissure A ...

s due to its inadequate foundations in the context of poor ground conditions, county leaders decided to procure a new building on the same site. The new building, which was designed by

Sir Robert Smirke Sir Robert Smirke (1 October 1780 – 18 April 1867) was an English architect, one of the leaders of Greek Revival architecture, though he also used other architectural styles (such as Gothic and Tudor). As an attached (i.e. official) arch ...

, in the Italianate style and built by Birch and Sons at a cost of £12,000, was completed in March 1837. The design involved a symmetrical main frontage with nine bays facing onto Market Square; the central section, which slightly projected forward, featured a doorway on the ground floor and pedimented windows on the first and second floors. Internally, the principal rooms were the two courtrooms (one for the crown court and one for the

nisi prius ''Nisi prius'' () (Latin: "unless before") is a historical term in English law. In the 19th century, it came to be used to denote generally all legal actions tried before judges of the King's Bench Division and in the early twentieth century for a ...

court); there was also a "Great Room", which measured long, wide and high, for public gatherings. The building was badly damaged in a fire, which was incompetently tackled by the local fire brigade, in November 1880 and was subsequently rebuilt internally. The building continued to be used as a facility for dispensing justice but, following the implementation of the

Local Government Act 1888 The Local Government Act 1888 (51 & 52 Vict. c. 41) was an Act of Parliament (United Kingdom), act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom which established county councils and county borough councils in England and Wales. It came into effect ...

, which established county councils in every county, it also became the meeting place of Salop County Council. The local borough guildhall (i.e. borough council meeting place) was incorporated into the shirehall under a long-standing arrangement which pre-dated Smirke's structure. Council meetings were held in one of the courtrooms. The borough council moved out to Newport House in Dogpole in 1917 leaving the county council on their own. After the county council moved to the new Shirehall in Abbey Foregate in 1966, the building remained vacant and deteriorating until it was demolished to make way for a new retail and commercial centre known as Princess House in 1971. Works of art in the old Shirehall included a portrait of General Lord Hill by Sir William Beechey and a portrait of Admiral Sir Edward Owen by Richard Evans. Both these paintings were subsequently transferred to the Shrewsbury Museum and Art Gallery.

References

{{reflist Buildings and structures in Shrewsbury Government buildings completed in 1837 County halls in England Demolished buildings and structures in Shropshire Buildings and structures demolished in 1971