Richmond_Town_Hall,_North_Yorkshire

Richmond Town Hall, North Yorkshire

Richmond Town Hall, North Yorkshire

Municipal building in Richmond, North Yorkshire, England

Richmond Town Hall is a municipal building in the Market Place, Richmond, North Yorkshire, England. The structure, which is the meeting place of Richmond Town Council, is a grade II listed building.[1]

Quick Facts Location, Coordinates ...

History

The current building was erected on the site of the ancient guildhall of the Guild of St John the Baptist.[2] It was designed by Thomas Atkinson in the neoclassical style, built in rubble masonry with a stucco finish at a cost of £600 and was completed in 1756.[3][4] The design involved a near symmetrical main frontage with seven bays facing onto the Market Place; the left hand section featured a doorway with Tuscan order columns supporting an entablature in the right hand bay, while the right hand section featured a rusticated archway in the central bay. The first floor was fenestrated by a row of sash windows with keystones. The ground floor of the left hand section formed a public house while the remainder of the building formed the town hall.[5] A double curving stone staircase provided access to the main assembly hall which displayed a coat of arms of King George II and extended the full width of the whole building on the first floor.[6]

A courtroom, which was situated to the rear of the assembly hall, was used for petty session hearings which were held one a fortnight.[7] A large five-sided stone porch containing a doorway with a fanlight, a hood mould and a keystone, flanked by pilasters supporting an entablature, was added to the central bay in the 19th century.[1] Following the end of the Second Boer War, a reception was held in the town hall for members of the volunteer battalions of the Green Howards who had served in South Africa.[8]

After the death of the founder of the scout movement, Lord Baden-Powell, in January 1941, his widow, Lady Baden-Powell, presented a landscape painting, depicting a view from Richmond Castle down the Swale Valley, to the town; the painting, which had originally been commissioned on the occasion of the Baden-Powells' marriage, was hung over the mantelpiece in the mayor's parlour.[4] A plaque commemorating the borough's fund raising effort during Warship Week was erected in the building in 1942.[2] Additional plaques were installed to reflect the borough's fund raising effort during Wings for Victory Week in 1943[9] and during Salute the Soldier Week in 1944.[10]

A large reception room on the ground floor of the right-hand section of the building was refurbished and fitted out as a council chamber with new furniture supplied by Waring & Gillow in 1956.[4] An early 17th century portrait of Queen Elizabeth I on a wooden panel, which had previously hung in the Bowes Hospital at the foot of Anchorage Hill, was installed in the council chamber.[11][12] The courtroom on the first floor remained in use as a judicial facility until 1964 when hearings moved to the new magistrates' courts in I'Anson Road.[13]

The council chamber ceased to be the local seat of government when the enlarged Richmondshire District Council was formed at Swale House in Richmond in 1974.[14][15][16] However, it subsequently became the meeting place of Richmond Town Council.[17] The courtroom, although no longer in use, was restored in 2002,[18] and the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall attended a reception in the town hall in September 2005.[19] The future Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rishi Sunak, spoke at a meeting in the town hall, arranged to make the case for Brexit, in June 2016.[20]

Other works of art in the town hall include a painting by Harold Speed depicting Green Bridge,[21] a painting by Arthur Bell showing a goose fair in the town[22] and a painting by Robert Gallon depicting a view of the river.[23]

References

  1. [1]
    Historic England. "Town Hall, Town Hall Hotel (1240517)". National Heritage List for England. Retrieved 3 March 2022.
  2. [2]
    Hatcher, Jane (2011). "Some of the Treasures of Richmond Town Hall". Richmond Town Council. Retrieved 3 March 2022.
  3. [3]
    Pevsner, Nikolaus (1981). Yorkshire, The North Riding (Buildings of England Series). Yale University Press. p. 295. ISBN 978-0300096651.
  4. [4]
    Hatcher, Jane (2010). "Town Hall". Richmond Town Council. Retrieved 3 March 2022.
  5. [5]
    "Richmond: Conservation Area Appraisal and Management Proposals" (PDF). Richmondshire District Council. p. 2. Retrieved 3 March 2022.
  6. [6]
    "Richmond Town Hall". North Yorkshire County Council. Retrieved 3 March 2022.
  7. [7]
    "Richmond". Kelly's Directory of the North and East Ridings of Yorkshire. 1913. Retrieved 3 March 2022.
  8. [8]
    Powell, Geoffrey; Powell, John S.W. (2015). "The History of the Green Howards". Pen and Sword. p. 118. ISBN 978-1473857995.
  9. [9]
    "Wings for Victory Week". Art UK. Retrieved 4 March 2022.
  10. [10]
    "Salute the Soldier Week". Retrieved 4 March 2022.
  11. [11]
    Page, William (1914). "'The borough of Richmond', in A History of the County of York North Riding". London: British History Online. pp. 17–35. Retrieved 4 March 2022.
  12. [12]
    "Elizabeth I (1533–1603)". Art UK. Retrieved 4 March 2022.
  13. [13]
    "Battle to stave off court's closure". The Northern Echo. 29 November 2001. Retrieved 4 March 2022.
  14. [14]
    Local Government Act 1972. 1972 c.70. The Stationery Office Ltd. 1997. ISBN 0-10-547072-4.
  15. [15]
    "No. 46690". The London Gazette. 19 September 1975. p. 11861.
  16. [16]
    "Last Richmond Council Office Sold". Richmond Online. 27 October 2015. Retrieved 3 March 2022.
  17. [17]
    "Meetings". Richmond Town Council. Retrieved 3 March 2022.
  18. [18]
    "Richmond Town Hall". Richmond Online. Retrieved 3 March 2022.
  19. [19]
    "Visit to Ricmond". Royal Circular. 14 September 2005. Retrieved 3 March 2022.
  20. [20]
    Ashcroft, Michael (2020). Going for Broke: The Rise of Rishi Sunak. Biteback Publishing. ISBN 978-1785906381.
  21. [21]
    "View of Green Bridge". Retrieved 3 March 2022.
  22. [22]
    "Goose Fair at Richmond". Art UK. Retrieved 3 March 2022.
  23. [23]
    "View of Richmond". Art UK. Retrieved 3 March 2022.
Share this article:

This article uses material from the Wikipedia article Richmond_Town_Hall,_North_Yorkshire, and is written by contributors. Text is available under a CC BY-SA 4.0 International License; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.