Bentham Town Hall, also known as High Bentham Town Hall, is a municipal building in Station Road,

High Bentham Bentham is a civil parishes in England, civil parish in North Yorkshire, England, with a population of 3,027 at the 2011 Census. The parish includes the town High Bentham, occasionally known as Higher Bentham or just Bentham, and the older ad ...

, a town in

North Yorkshire North Yorkshire is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in Northern England.The Unitary authorities of England, unitary authority areas of City of York, York and North Yorkshire (district), North Yorkshire are in Yorkshire and t ...

, England. The building currently accommodates Bentham Town Council but is also used as a community events venue and a tourist information office.

History

Following significant population growth, largely associated with the farming industry, parish leaders decided to commission a public hall for the town in the early 1870s. The new building was designed in the

neoclassical style Neoclassicism, also spelled Neo-classicism, emerged as a Western cultural movement in the decorative and visual arts, literature, theatre, music, and architecture that drew inspiration from the art and culture of classical antiquity. Neoclassici ...

, built in

ashlar Ashlar () is a cut and dressed rock (geology), stone, worked using a chisel to achieve a specific form, typically rectangular in shape. The term can also refer to a structure built from such stones. Ashlar is the finest stone masonry unit, a ...

stone and was completed in 1877. The design involved a symmetrical main frontage of three bays facing onto Station Road. The central bay featured a large opening flanked by

brackets A bracket is either of two tall fore- or back-facing punctuation marks commonly used to isolate a segment of text or data from its surroundings. They come in four main pairs of shapes, as given in the box to the right, which also gives their n ...

supporting a

cornice In architecture, a cornice (from the Italian ''cornice'' meaning "ledge") is generally any horizontal decorative Moulding (decorative), moulding that crowns a building or furniture element—for example, the cornice over a door or window, ar ...

on the ground floor and a tri-partite window with a

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 ...

supported by brackets on the first floor. The outer bays were fenestrated by bi-partite windows on both floors. The frontage was surmounted by a gable with a panel inscribed "Public Hall 1877" in the tympanum. Internally, the principal rooms were a market hall on the ground floor, and an assembly hall on the first floor. A clock tower with a

belfry The belfry /ˈbɛlfri/ is a structure enclosing bells for ringing as part of a building, usually as part of a bell tower or steeple. It can also refer to the entire tower or building, particularly in continental Europe for such a tower attached ...

and a

dome A dome () is an architectural element similar to the hollow upper half of a sphere. There is significant overlap with the term cupola, which may also refer to a dome or a structure on top of a dome. The precise definition of a dome has been a m ...

was added in 1902, to commemorate the

Coronation of King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra The coronation of the British monarch, coronation of Edward VII and his wife, Alexandra of Denmark, Alexandra, as King of the United Kingdom, king and List of British royal consorts, queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, ...

; the hour-striking clock (by

Potts of Leeds Potts of Leeds was a major British manufacturer of public clocks, based in Leeds, Yorkshire, England. History William Potts was born in December 1809 and was apprenticed to Samuel Thompson, a Darlington clockmaker. In 1833, at the age of 2 ...

) was set going the following year. A rectangular bronze plaque, intended to commemorate the lives of local service personnel who had died in the

First World War World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...

, was attached to the front of the building in the early 1920s. The town hall also served as a venue for local farm auctions; however, there was some derision in 1937, when the satirical magazine '' Punch'' quoted an unnamed local paper as reporting: "Three farmers in the Bentham District came under the hammer at a property sale held by Mr Richard Turner of Bentham in the Bentham Town Hall on Wednesday afternoon and were all disposed of". For much of the 20th century, the building served as the meeting place of the parish council: it was also used for concerts and theatre performances. Following the re-organisation of local government in 1974, the parish council became Bentham Town Council. The town council continued to hold its meetings in the town hall. In 2004, an extensive programme of works, financed by a grant from

North Yorkshire County Council North Yorkshire Council, known between 1974 and 2023 as North Yorkshire County Council, is the Local government in England, local authority for the non-metropolitan county of North Yorkshire (district), North Yorkshire, England. Since 2023 the ...

, was initiated. The works included the installation of a new lobby area, a kitchen and a lift, as well as the creation of some office space. Amidst some rationalisation of local facilities, various services, including the town clerk's office and the tourist information office, were subsequently moved into the town hall.

References

{{reflist Government buildings completed in 1877 City and town halls in North Yorkshire Bentham, North Yorkshire