The Old Town Hall, sometimes referred to as the Moot Hall, is a municipal building in Church Street,

Clitheroe Clitheroe () is a town and civil parishes in England, civil parish in the Ribble Valley, Borough of Ribble Valley, Lancashire, England; it is located north-west of Manchester. It is near the Forest of Bowland and is often used as a base for to ...

Lancashire Lancashire ( , ; abbreviated ''Lancs'') is a ceremonial county in North West England. It is bordered by Cumbria to the north, North Yorkshire and West Yorkshire to the east, Greater Manchester and Merseyside to the south, and the Irish Sea to ...

, England. The structure, which was the meeting place of Clitheroe Borough Council, 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

The first municipal building in Clitheroe was a moot hall built on Church Street in about 1610. It contained prison cells with

barrel vault A barrel vault, also known as a tunnel vault, wagon vault or wagonhead vault, is an architectural element formed by the extrusion of a single curve (or pair of curves, in the case of a pointed barrel vault) along a given distance. The curves are ...

ed ceilings which were cut out of solid rock and were used to accommodate petty criminals on their way to imprisonment in

Lancaster Castle Lancaster Castle is a medieval castle and former prison in Lancaster, Lancashire, Lancaster in the English county of Lancashire. Its early history is unclear, but it may have been founded in the 11th century on the site of a Roman fort ove ...

. In the early 19th century borough officials decided to demolish those parts of the old moot hall which were above ground and to erect a new structure on the same site. The new building was designed by

Thomas Rickman Thomas Rickman (8 June 17764 January 1841) was an English architect and architectural antiquary who was a major figure in the Gothic Revival. He is particularly remembered for his ''Attempt to Discriminate the Styles of English Architecture'' ...

in the

Gothic Revival style Gothic Revival (also referred to as Victorian Gothic or neo-Gothic) is an architectural movement that after a gradual build-up beginning in the second half of the 17th century became a widespread movement in the first half of the 19th century ...

, 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 1820. The design involved an asymmetrical main frontage with four bays facing onto the Church street; on the ground floor, there was an arched doorway flanked by

colonette A colonnette is a small slender column, usually decorative, which supports a Beam (structure), beam or lintel. Colonnettes have also been used to refer to a feature of furnishings such as a dressing table and Grandfather clock, case clock, and eve ...

s in the left hand bay and

lancet window A lancet window is a tall, narrow window with a sharp pointed arch at its top. This arch may or may not be a steep lancet arch (in which the compass centres for drawing the arch fall outside the opening). It acquired the "lancet" name from its rese ...

s in the other bays. Between the storeys there were five armorial shields, on the first floor there was a central three-light window with lancet windows in the outer bays and, at roof level, there was an

octagon In geometry, an octagon () is an eight-sided polygon or 8-gon. A '' regular octagon'' has Schläfli symbol and can also be constructed as a quasiregular truncated square, t, which alternates two types of edges. A truncated octagon, t is a ...

spire A spire is a tall, slender, pointed structure on top of a roof of a building or tower, especially at the summit of church steeples. A spire may have a square, circular, or polygonal plan, with a roughly conical or pyramidal shape. Spire ...

with a weathervane, which was high. Internally, the principal room was the council chamber which featured leaded windows and was accessed by a

spiral staircase Stairs are a structure designed to bridge a large vertical direction, vertical distance between lower and higher levels by dividing it into smaller vertical distances. This is achieved as a diagonal series of horizontal platforms called steps wh ...

. The prison cells were retained, in situ, from the older building. The quarterly

assizes The assizes (), or courts of assize, were periodic courts held around England and Wales until 1972, when together with the quarter sessions they were abolished by the Courts Act 1971 and replaced by a single permanent Crown Court. The assizes ex ...

and the magistrates' court hearings were held in the building from about 1825 and the town became a

municipal borough A municipal borough was a type of local government Local government is a generic term for the lowest tiers of governance or public administration within a particular sovereign state. Local governments typically constitute a subdivision of ...

with the building as its headquarters in 1835. It was at the town hall that

David Shackleton Sir David James Shackleton (21 November 1863 – 1 August 1938) was a cotton worker and trade unionist who became the third Labour Party (UK), Labour Member of Parliament in the United Kingdom, following the formation of the British Labour Pa ...

was elected unopposed as the Labour Member of Parliament in the

1902 Clitheroe by-election The 1902 Clitheroe by-election was held on 1 August 1902 after the incumbent Liberal MP Sir Ughtred Kay-Shuttleworth was elevated to the House of Lords. The Labour Representation Committee candidate David Shackleton won the by-election unoppos ...

; he was only the third Labour MP ever to be elected to the

UK Parliament The Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is the supreme legislative body of the United Kingdom, and may also legislate for the Crown Dependencies and the British Overseas Territories. It meets at the Palace of ...

. The town hall continued to serve as the headquarters of the borough council for much of the 20th century but ceased to be the local seat of government when the enlarged Ribble Valley District Council was established in 1974. The district council was initially based at offices in

Clitheroe Castle Clitheroe Castle is a ruined early medieval castle in Clitheroe in the Ribble Valley, Borough of Ribble Valley, Lancashire, England. It was the ''Caput baroniae, caput'' of the Honour of Clitheroe, a vast estate stretching along the western side ...

before moving to purpose-built offices in Church Walk in the late 1970s. Clitheroe Town Council, which was established in 1974, chose to establish its offices on the opposite side of the road in the former borough treasurer's office, No. 9 Church Street, rather than using the old town hall. However, the town council continued to use the old town hall for its annual mayor-making ceremonies. An extensive programme of refurbishment works was carried out in the late 1980s, enabling the town hall to be integrated into the Clitheroe Library: the council chamber was subsequently used as an events venue for lectures and concerts and the prison cells were used for storage purposes. Works of art in the former council chamber include a portrait by the Australian painter,

James Peter Quinn James Peter Quinn (4 December 1869 – 18 February 1951) was an Australian portrait painter born in Melbourne. Biography He studied part-time under Frederick McCubbin 1887–1999, at the Melbourne's National Gallery of Victoria Art School ...

, of the local historian and author, William Self Weeks.

References

{{Clitheroe Government buildings completed in 1820 City and town halls in Lancashire Clitheroe Grade II listed buildings in Lancashire

History

See also

References