The Old Shire Hall is a former municipal building in Old Elvet,

Durham Durham most commonly refers to: *Durham, England, a cathedral city and the county town of County Durham *County Durham, an English county * Durham County, North Carolina, a county in North Carolina, United States *Durham, North Carolina, a city in N ...

. The building, which was the headquarters of Durham County Council from 1898 to 1963, is a Grade II

listed building In the United Kingdom, a listed building or listed structure is one that has been placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Historic Environment Scotland in Scotland, in Wales, and the Northern Irel ...

History

In the 18th century the justices held the assizes in the Shire Hall (also known as the County House) beside

Palace Green Palace Green is an area of grass in the centre of Durham, England, flanked by Durham Cathedral and Durham Castle. The Cathedral and Castle together form a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Although initially not part of the site itself, Palace Green ...

; they then moved to a new courthouse at the head of Old Elvet in 1811. Following the implementation of the

Local Government Act 1888 Local may refer to: Geography and transportation * Local (train), a train serving local traffic demand * Local, Missouri, a community in the United States * Local government, a form of public administration, usually the lowest tier of administrat ...

, which established county councils in every county, it became necessary to find a meeting place for Durham County Council. County leaders decided that the courthouse was not suitable for the purpose and chose to procure county council offices nearby: the site they selected in Old Elvet had previously been occupied by a row of large residential properties. The foundation stone for the new building was laid by the

Lord Lieutenant of Durham This is a list of people who have served as Lord Lieutenant of Durham. *Henry Neville, 5th Earl of Westmorland 1552–? * Henry Hastings, 3rd Earl of Huntingdon 2 August 1586 – 1595 *''vacant'' *Robert Carr, 1st Earl of Somerset 4 February ...

, the

Earl of Durham Earl of Durham is a title in the Peerage of the United Kingdom. It was created in 1833 for the Whig politician and colonial official John Lambton, 1st Baron Durham. Known as "Radical Jack", he played a leading role in the passing of the Gr ...

in April 1896. It was designed by Harry Barnes and Frederick Coates in the

Baroque Revival The Baroque Revival, also known as Neo-Baroque (or Second Empire architecture in France and Wilhelminism in Germany), was an architectural style of the late 19th century. The term is used to describe architecture and architectural sculptu ...

style, built by David and John Rankin at a cost of £14,000 and was officially opened by Alderman Samuel Storey on 26 July 1898. The design involved a symmetrical main frontage with nine bays in red

terracotta Terracotta, terra cotta, or terra-cotta (; ; ), in its material sense as an earthenware substrate, is a clay-based unglazed or glazed ceramic where the fired body is porous. In applied art, craft, construction, and architecture, terracotta ...

facing onto Old Elvet with the end bays slightly projected forwards; the central section, which also slightly projected forwards, featured an arched doorway on the ground floor with a

wrought-iron Wrought iron is an iron alloy with a very low carbon content (less than 0.08%) in contrast to that of cast iron (2.1% to 4%). It is a semi-fused mass of iron with fibrous slag inclusions (up to 2% by weight), which give it a wood-like "grain" t ...

grill; there was a pair of round headed windows on the first floor and a tower with a

copper Copper is a chemical element with the symbol Cu (from la, cuprum) and atomic number 29. It is a soft, malleable, and ductile metal with very high thermal and electrical conductivity. A freshly exposed surface of pure copper has a pinkis ...

-clad dome at roof level. Internally, the principal room was the council chamber. A new wing, banded in stone and brick, which added an extra three bays to the east of the main building, was completed in 1905. A memorial to county council staff who had died in the

First First or 1st is the ordinal form of the number one (#1). First or 1st may also refer to: *World record, specifically the first instance of a particular achievement Arts and media Music * 1$T, American rapper, singer-songwriter, DJ, and rec ...

and

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposi ...

s was unveiled by the Chairman of the County Council, Councillor Thomas Benfold, on 10 November 1948.

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'' (1 ...

did not take a favourable view of the building in his 1953

Buildings of England The Pevsner Architectural Guides are a series of guide books to the architecture of Great Britain and Ireland. Begun in the 1940s by the art historian Sir Nikolaus Pevsner, the 46 volumes of the original Buildings of England series were publish ...

volume, where he described the building as a "deplorable" building "with monumental intentions and disastrous effects" whose "cursedly imperishable red Victorian brick... is such crushing proof of technical proficiency and aesthetic dumbness". After the County Council moved to County Hall at Aykley Heads in October 1963, the Shire Hall served as the administrative headquarters of Durham University until September 2012 when the University moved to the Mountjoy site, in the Palatine Centre on Stockton Road. The Shire Hall then stood vacant until it was converted for use as a hotel by Brims of Sunderland to the plans of HL Architects: it re-opened as the

Hotel Indigo Hotel Indigo is a chain of small, individually owned boutique hotels, which is part of IHG Hotels & Resorts. As of December 2021, there were 130 Hotel Indigo properties featuring 16,343 rooms worldwide. History The first Hotel Indigo opened i ...

in March 2018.

References

{{reflist Grade II listed buildings in County Durham D Government buildings completed in 1898 Baroque Revival architecture