Old Town Hall, Needham Market
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The Old Town Hall is a municipal building in the High Street in
Needham Market Needham Market is a small town in the Mid Suffolk district of Suffolk, England, set in the Gipping Valley. Nearby villages include Barking, Suffolk, Barking, Darmsden, Badley and Creeting St Mary. The town is located just east of the A14 road ( ...
,
Suffolk Suffolk ( ) is a ceremonial county in the East of England and East Anglia. It is bordered by Norfolk to the north, the North Sea to the east, Essex to the south, and Cambridgeshire to the west. Ipswich is the largest settlement and the county ...
, England. The building, which now accommodates an antiques centre and other shops, 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 building was commissioned by a group of businessmen, led by Admiral Sir George Broke-Middleton of
Shrubland Hall Shrubland Palace, Coddenham, Coddenham, Suffolk, is an historic English Palace with planned gardens in Suffolk, England, built in the 1770s. The Palace was used by the Royal Family members and briefly reopened as a hotel, restaurant and spa in ...
, who set up a private company to finance and commission a municipal building for the benefit of the town. The site they selected, which was in the High Street, was occupied by a cottage which had been the birthplace of the artist, Samuel Read. The building was designed by Frederick Barnes 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 by a local contractor, H. Godfrey, in red and buff bricks at a cost of £1,300 and was completed in late 1866. The design involved a symmetrical main frontage with three bays facing onto the High Street. The central bay, which slightly projected forward at ground floor level, featured a round headed entrance with imposts supporting an
architrave In classical architecture, an architrave (; , also called an epistyle; ) is the lintel or beam, typically made of wood or stone, that rests on the capitals of columns. The term can also apply to all sides, including the vertical members, ...
: there were three deeply-recessed narrow round headed windows on the first floor. The outer bays were fenestrated by tripartite
sash window A sash window or hung sash window is made of one or more movable panels, or "sashes". The individual sashes are traditionally paned windows, but can now contain an individual sheet (or sheets, in the case of double glazing) of glass. History ...
s on the ground floor and by single deeply-recessed round headed windows on the first floor. At roof level, there was a
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 ...
and 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 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 ...
, while the corners were decorated by full-height piers surmounted by small
pediment Pediments are a form of gable in classical architecture, usually of a triangular shape. Pediments are placed above the horizontal structure of the cornice (an elaborated lintel), or entablature if supported by columns.Summerson, 130 In an ...
s. Internally, the principal rooms were the lecture room, which was at the front of the building on the first floor, a courtroom, a public library and a reading room. There were also offices for the local police officers and a lock-up for petty criminals. A commemorative stone, recording Broke-Middleton's patronage, as well as the names of the architect and the builder, was installed above the entrance by Broke-Middleton himself in June 1866. The architectural historian,
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 ...
, was unimpressed with the design and referred to it as "a sad building of yellow and red brick with lean round arches". In the 19th century, the courtroom was used for fortnightly
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 for the Bosmere and Claydon Hundred, one of the ancient
hundreds of Suffolk The county of Suffolk was divided into hundreds between Saxon times and the 19th century when, although never formally abolished, they were effectively replaced for administrative purposes by districts. In 1831 the county was subdivided into tw ...
. 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 town hall narrowly missed being demolished on 19 October 1942 when a German bomb fell on a site just to the south of the building, killing four civilians and injuring many more. The company which had financed and commissioned the building was wound-up in 1948 and the building was subsequently converted for commercial use: it has since been used by a variety of local businesses including a publishing house and an antiques centre.


References

{{reflist Government buildings completed in 1866 City and town halls in Suffolk Grade II listed buildings in Suffolk Needham Market