Top Qs
Timeline
Chat
Perspective
Accrington Town Hall
Municipal building in Lancashire, England From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Remove ads
Accrington Town Hall is a municipal building on Blackburn Road in Accrington, Lancashire, England. The town hall, which was the headquarters of Accrington Borough Council, is a Grade II* listed building.[1]
Remove ads
History
Summarize
Perspective
The building was originally commissioned as an assembly hall to commemorate the life of the former Prime Minister, Sir Robert Peel.[2][3] The cost of construction was funded by a campaign of public subscription led by a local businessman, Benjamin Hargreaves of Arden Hall.[4][5][6]
The new building was designed by James F. Green and T. Birtwhistle in the neoclassical style, built in ashlar stone and opened as the "Peel Institute" in 1858.[7][8] The design involved a symmetrical main frontage with seven bays facing onto Blackburn Road; the central section, which projected forward, featured a porte-cochère supporting a balustrade and a hexastyle portico with Corinthian order columns on the first floor with a pediment above.[1] Internally, the principal room was the assembly hall on the first floor.[1] The assembly hall also accommodated meetings of the local mechanics institute.[9]
The building was acquired by the local board of health in 1864[10] and the area became a municipal borough with the town hall as its headquarters in 1878.[10] The Accrington Pals Battalion of the East Lancashire Regiment was formally raised by the mayor, Councillor John Harwood, inside the town hall in September 1914; the battalion subsequently marched past the building before preparing to deploy, initially to Egypt and then to the Western Front, during the First World War.[11][12][13]
The town hall continued to serve as the headquarters of the borough council for much of the 20th century and remained a meeting place for the enlarged Hyndburn Borough Council which was formed in 1974.[14] Many of the council officers and their departments were based at Eagle House before moving to Scaitcliffe House, the former canteen for textile machinery manufacturers, Howard & Bullough, in June 2002.[15] Whilst Scaitcliffe House is used for Hyndburn's committee meetings, full council meetings are still held at the town hall.[16]
A new town square was created in front of the town hall and market hall, to commemorate the lives of the Accrington Pals, in 2017.[17] The scheme involved the removal of a series of trees, which had been planted outside the town hall and market hall in 1962,[18] and the installation of new paving, seating and signage recording the history of the Accrington Pals, Accrington Stanley F.C. and the impact of the Industrial Revolution on the town.[19]
Remove ads
See also
References
Wikiwand - on
Seamless Wikipedia browsing. On steroids.
Remove ads