Thornaby Town Hall | |
---|---|
Location | Thornaby-on-Tees |
Coordinates | 54°33′30″N 1°18′10″W / 54.5583°N 1.3027°W |
Built | 1892 |
Architect | James Garry |
Architectural style(s) | Renaissance style |
Listed Building – Grade II | |
Official name | Former Town Hall |
Designated | 9 October 1992 |
Reference no. | 1320257 |
Thornaby Town Hall is a municipal building in the Mandale Road in Thornaby-on-Tees, North Yorkshire, England. The building, which is owned by Thornaby Town Council, is a Grade II listed building. [1]
In anticipation of the proposed merger of Thornaby and South Stockton into the municipal borough of Thornaby-on-Tees municipal borough in 1892, [2] civic leaders decided to commission a dedicated town hall. [1] The site they selected was a developing area occupied by some clay pits in what had previously been close to the Mandale Marshes just south of South Stockton railway station. [3] [4]
The foundation stone for the new building was laid by the chairman of the South Stockton local board of health, John Steel, on 25 October 1890. [5] It was designed by James Garry of West Hartlepool in the Renaissance style, built by W. C. Atkinson and was officially opened as Thornaby Town Hall in 1892. [1]
The design involved a chamfered main frontage at the junction of Mandale Road and Railway Terrace; the corner section featured a double window on the ground floor, an oriel window on the first floor and a clock tower with cupola and weather vane above. [1] The Mandale road elevation featured a doorway with brackets supporting an entablature and round headed windows with stained glass fanlights on the first floor; the Railway Terrace elevation had two bays with windows in a similar style to the Mandale Road elevation, but the bays further along the street displayed conventional sash windows on both floors. [1] However, Nikolaus Pevsner said that the town hall exhibited "a totally undistinguished design on a visually most unsuitable site", in his 1933 The North Riding (Buildings of England) book. [6] The quarter-chiming clock, which was made by Potts of Leeds [7] and donated by the first mayor of the town, Alderman William Anderson, was started on 27 January 1892. [5] Internally, the principal rooms were the council chamber and the mayor's parlour. [8]
The building continued to serve as the headquarters of Thornaby Borough Council for much of the 20th century but ceased to be the local seat of government when the short-lived County Borough of Teesside was formed in 1967. [9] It then remained largely unused, in the ownership of Stockton-on-Tees Borough Council from 1974, until Stockton Council decided to sell the building to a developer, Python Properties, in January 2010. [8] After the sale to Python fell through in May 2011, [10] Stockton Council carried out a consultation on its future use in September 2011. [11] The consultation resulted in Thornaby Town Council, which had been formed in 1995, [12] agreeing to acquire the building in May 2012 [13] and completing the transaction in November 2012. [14]
An extensive programme of renovation works costing £900,000, funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund, [15] was initiated by the town council in autumn 2017, with the intention that the works would act as a catalyst for further regeneration in the area. [16] After the actual cost of renovation exceeded the budget by £250,000, the town's mayor, Steve Walmsley, indicated in November 2019 that the extra cost would be recovered through council tax increases. [17]