Stokesley Town Hall is a municipal building in the Market Place in

Stokesley Stokesley is a market town and civil parish in the Hambleton District of North Yorkshire, England, formerly a part of the historic North Riding of Yorkshire. It lies on the River Leven. An electoral ward, of the same name, stretches north to ...

North Yorkshire North Yorkshire is the largest ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county (lieutenancy area) in England, covering an area of . Around 40% of the county is covered by National parks of the United Kingdom, national parks, including most of ...

, England. The structure, which accommodates the offices and meeting place of Stokesley Town Council, 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

The first municipal building in Stokesley was a

tollbooth A tollbooth (or toll booth) is an enclosure placed along a toll road that is used for the purpose of collecting a toll from passing traffic. A structure consisting of several tollbooths placed next to each other is called a toll plaza, tollga ...

in the Market Place which dated back at least to the early 18th century; it was primarily used as a venue for the

lord of the manor Lord of the Manor is a title that, in Anglo-Saxon England, referred to the landholder of a rural estate. The lord enjoyed manorial rights (the rights to establish and occupy a residence, known as the manor house and demesne) as well as seig ...

to hold manorial court hearings but it was also the place for the storage of a set of imperial measures, typically held by local authorities to ensure tradesmen comply with the

Weights and Measures Act 1824 Weights and measures acts are acts of the British Parliament determining the regulation of weights and measures. It also refers to similar royal and parliamentary acts of the Kingdoms of England and Scotland and the medieval Welsh states. ...

. By the mid-19th century the building was in a dilapidated state and the then lord of the manor, Lieutenant-Colonel Robert Hildyard of Stokesley Manor, decided to replace it with a more substantial structure. The new building was designed 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 drew its inspiration from the models and architectural vocabulary of 16th-century Italian R ...

, built in ashlar stone and was completed in 1853. The design involved a symmetrical main frontage with five bays facing onto the Market Place; the central bay featured a recessed doorway with a rectangular fanlight. The other bays on the ground floor were fenestrated with square sash windows, while the bays on the first floor were fenestrated with tall sash windows with architraves and

window sill A windowsill (also written window sill or window-sill, and less frequently in British English, cill) is the horizontal structure or surface at the bottom of a window. Window sills serve to structurally support and hold the window in place. The ...

s. The building was originally arcaded at the back so that butter markets could be held and, at roof level, there was a heavily modillioned cornice. Internally, the principal room was the assembly room on the first floor where a portrait of Hildyard was hung on the wall; there was also a reading room, a library for the local mechanics institute and a branch of the Langbaurgh West Savings Bank as well as a dispensary. 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'' (1 ...

, was critical of the design and described the structure as having "no fancies at all". In the 19th century the assembly room was used for

magistrates' court A magistrates' court is a lower court where, in several jurisdictions, all criminal proceedings start. Also some civil matters may be dealt with here, such as family proceedings. Courts * Magistrates' court (England and Wales) * Magistrate's Cou ...

and county court hearings. It was also the venue for a celebratory dinner for 200 people in March 1857 when the North Yorkshire and Cleveland Railway reached Stokesley and the local railway station started accepting rail passengers. The building was transferred to the ownership of the local parish council under an indenture dated 1919. A developer offered to acquire the building, demolish it and redevelop the site for retail use in 1965 but the parish council unanimously rejected the proposal. Following local government reorganisation in 1974, it went on to accommodate the offices and meeting place of Stokesley Town Council. A major programme of refurbishment works costing £280,000, which included the installation of a lift, was completed with financial support from Biffa and local charities, in October 2003.

References

{{Reflist Government buildings completed in 1853 City and town halls in North Yorkshire Stokesley Grade II listed buildings in North Yorkshire