Bolton Crown Court
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Bolton Law Courts is a
Crown Court The Crown Court is the criminal trial court, court of first instance in England and Wales responsible for hearing all indictable offences, some Hybrid offence, either way offences and appeals of the decisions of magistrates' courts. It is ...
venue, which deals with criminal cases, and a County Court venue, which deals with civil cases, in Black Horse Street,
Bolton Bolton ( , locally ) is a town in Greater Manchester in England. In the foothills of the West Pennine Moors, Bolton is between Manchester, Blackburn, Wigan, Bury, Greater Manchester, Bury and Salford. It is surrounded by several towns and vill ...
, England.


History

For much of the 19th century major criminal trials in Bolton were held in Little Bolton Town Hall before being transferred to the Bolton County Police Court in Castle Street in 1876. Bolton County Police Court continued to be a venue for major criminal trials during the 20th century. However, as the number of criminal cases in the Bolton area grew, it became necessary to commission a more modern courthouse. The site selected by the
Lord Chancellor's Department The Lord Chancellor's Department was a United Kingdom government department answerable to the Lord Chancellor with jurisdiction over England and Wales. Created in 1885 as the Lord Chancellor's Office with a small staff to assist the Lord Chance ...
, on the west side of Black Horse Street, had been occupied by Deansgate Goods Station. The new building was designed by the Property Services Agency in the
modernist style Modern architecture, also called modernist architecture, or the modern movement, is an architectural movement and style that was prominent in the 20th century, between the earlier Art Deco and later postmodern movements. Modern architecture wa ...
, built in stone at a cost of £4 million, and was completed in 1982. The design involved an asymmetrical main frontage of three sections facing onto Black Horse Street. The central section featured an opening containing a revolving doorway, with a column to the left supporting a
balcony A balcony (from , "scaffold") is a platform projecting from the wall of a building, supported by columns or console brackets, and enclosed with a balustrade, usually above the ground floor. They are commonly found on multi-level houses, apartme ...
to which a Royal coat of arms was fixed. The central section was fenestrated by rows of
casement window A casement window is a window that is attached to its frame by one or more hinges at the side. They are used singly or in pairs within a common frame, in which case they are hinged on the outside. Casement windows are often held open using a c ...
s on the first, second and third floors, with that on the second floor projected forward. The left hand section, which was
rectangle In Euclidean geometry, Euclidean plane geometry, a rectangle is a Rectilinear polygon, rectilinear convex polygon or a quadrilateral with four right angles. It can also be defined as: an equiangular quadrilateral, since equiangular means that a ...
-shaped, and the right hand section, which was
hexagon In geometry, a hexagon (from Greek , , meaning "six", and , , meaning "corner, angle") is a six-sided polygon. The total of the internal angles of any simple (non-self-intersecting) hexagon is 720°. Regular hexagon A regular hexagon is de ...
-shaped, were both irregularly fenestrated with a mixture of square casement windows and
lancet window A lancet window is a tall, narrow window with a sharp pointed arch at its top. This arch may or may not be a steep lancet arch (in which the compass centres for drawing the arch fall outside the opening). It acquired the "lancet" name from its rese ...
s. Internally, the complex was laid out to accommodate six courtrooms. 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'' (195 ...
, was critical of the design, describing it as looking "more like a relic from the distant past than a recent addition to the town". A sculpture by Dame Barbara Hepworth, entitled "Two Forms", was placed outside the building shortly after it opened but was subsequently moved to a site in front of Senate House of the
University of Bolton The University of Greater Manchester (legally: The University of Bolton Higher Education Corporation) is a public university in Bolton, Greater Manchester in England. The university is commonly referred to as a 'post-92' institution, which is a ...
. Notable cases include the trial and conviction of a group of
gay ''Gay'' is a term that primarily refers to a homosexual person or the trait of being homosexual. The term originally meant 'carefree', 'cheerful', or 'bright and showy'. While scant usage referring to male homosexuality dates to the late ...
and
bisexual Bisexuality is romantic attraction, sexual attraction, or sexual behavior toward both males and females. It may also be defined as the attraction to more than one gender, to people of both the same and different gender, or the attraction t ...
men, in January 1998, for gross indecency under the
Sexual Offences Act 1956 The Sexual Offences Act 1956 (4 & 5 Eliz. 2. c. 69) is an Act of Parliament, Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that consolidated the English criminal law relating to sexual offences between 1957 and 2004. It was mostly repealed (from 1 ...
; after a public campaign supported by the political groups,
OutRage! OutRage! was a British political group focused on lesbian and gay rights. Founded in 1990, the organisation ran for 21 years until 2011. It described itself as "a broad based group of queers committed to radical, non-violent protest, non-viol ...
and
Liberty Liberty is the state of being free within society from oppressive restrictions imposed by authority on one's way of life, behavior, or political views. The concept of liberty can vary depending on perspective and context. In the Constitutional ...
, the men did not receive custodial sentences and were eventually awarded compensation. Other cases have included the trial and conviction of a builder, Christopher Taylor, in August 2019, for the murder of his former partner, Maggie Smythe.


References

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External links


Court information
Buildings and structures in Bolton Crown Court buildings Government buildings completed in 1982 Court buildings in England