Cardigan Guildhall
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Cardigan Guildhall (), is a municipal building in Pendre,
Cardigan, Ceredigion Cardigan (, ) is a town and Community (Wales), community in the Principal areas of Wales, county of Ceredigion, Wales. Positioned on the tidal reach of the River Teifi at the point where Ceredigion meets Pembrokeshire, Cardigan was the county to ...
,
Wales Wales ( ) is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is bordered by the Irish Sea to the north and west, England to the England–Wales border, east, the Bristol Channel to the south, and the Celtic ...
. The structure, which is now used as an art gallery and community events venue, is a Grade II*
listed building In the United Kingdom, a listed building is a structure of particular architectural or historic interest deserving of special protection. Such buildings are placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Hi ...
.


History

The first municipal building in the town was a market hall which was commissioned by a local publican, William Phillips, and erected in Market Lane in 1823. By the mid-19th century, the old market hall had become inadequate and civic leaders decided to commission a larger structure: the site they selected in Pendre was occupied by the local grammar school and by a house and a coach-house owned by a local businessman, Abraham Morgan. The foundation stone for the new building was laid by the mayor, Richard David Jenkins, on 8 July 1858. It was designed by Robert Jewell Withers in the Gothic Revival style, built by local builders, David Jenkins, John Davies and John Thomas of Cilgerran in
Blue Lias The Blue Lias is a formation (stratigraphy), geological formation in southern, eastern and western England and parts of South Wales, part of the Lias Group. The Blue Lias consists of a sequence of limestone and shale layers, laid down in latest ...
stone at a cost of £4,055 and was officially opened on 9 July 1860. The design involved an asymmetrical main frontage with seven bays facing onto Pendre; the main hall section, formed by the five bays on the right which were slightly projected forward, featured arched openings on the ground floor and mullioned and transomed windows with hood moulds on the first floor. The first bay on the left, which was gabled and also slightly projected forward, was fenestrated by a single window on the ground floor and by a pair of cross windows on the first floor, while the second bay of the left featured an arched doorway on the ground floor and a single window on the first floor. At roof level, the main section was covered by a
mansard roof A mansard or mansard roof (also called French roof or curb roof) is a multi-sided gambrel-style hip roof characterised by two slopes on each of its sides, with the lower slope at a steeper angle than the upper, and often punctured by dormer wi ...
. Internally, the principal rooms were the corn exchange on the ground floor and the great hall on the first floor. The guildhall was one of the first buildings in the UK to adopt the principles of Gothic Architecture contained in the book by the art critic,
John Ruskin John Ruskin (8 February 1819 20 January 1900) was an English polymath a writer, lecturer, art historian, art critic, draughtsman and philanthropist of the Victorian era. He wrote on subjects as varied as art, architecture, Critique of politic ...
, who claimed that "nothing can possibly be better or more graceful" than a well-constructed Venetian Gothic arch. A Russian
cannon A cannon is a large-caliber gun classified as a type of artillery, which usually launches a projectile using explosive chemical propellant. Gunpowder ("black powder") was the primary propellant before the invention of smokeless powder during th ...
, which had been captured during the
charge of the Light Brigade The Charge of the Light Brigade was a military action undertaken by British light cavalry against Russian forces during the Battle of Balaclava in the Crimean War, resulting in many casualties to the cavalry. On 25 October 1854, the Light Br ...
, led by Lord Cardigan against Russian forces during the
Battle of Balaclava The Battle of Balaclava, fought on 25 October 1854 during the Crimean War, was part of the Siege of Sevastopol (1854–55), an Allied attempt to capture the port and fortress of Sevastopol, Russian Empire, Russia's principal naval base on the Bl ...
in October 1854 in the
Crimean War The Crimean War was fought between the Russian Empire and an alliance of the Ottoman Empire, the Second French Empire, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and the Kingdom of Sardinia (1720–1861), Kingdom of Sardinia-Piedmont fro ...
, was installed outside the building in 1871. In the early 1890s, a clock tower with a
pyramid A pyramid () is a structure whose visible surfaces are triangular in broad outline and converge toward the top, making the appearance roughly a pyramid in the geometric sense. The base of a pyramid can be of any polygon shape, such as trian ...
-shaped roof was installed above the second bay on the left at the expense of the then mayor, David Davies. The tower was designed by a local architect, Richard Thomas, built by a local builder, John Evans, and completed in August 1892. A public library was officially opened in the former corn exchange on the ground floor of the building on 6 February 1950. The building continued to serve as the meeting place of the Cardigan Borough Council for much of the rest of the 20th century but ceased to be the local seat of government when the enlarged Ceredigion District Council was formed in 1974. After the public library relocated to the Canolfan Teifi in 1994, an art gallery was established on the ground floor of the building. A substantial programme of refurbishment works was carried out with financial support from the
Heritage Lottery Fund The National Lottery Heritage Fund, formerly the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF), distributes a share of National Lottery funding, supporting a wide range of heritage projects across the United Kingdom. History The fund's predecessor bodies were ...
by a not-for profit local regeneration company, Menter Aberteifi, at a cost of £2.5 million and completed in 2008.


See also

* Grade II* listed buildings in Ceredigion


References

{{Government buildings in Wales Cardigan, Ceredigion City and town halls in Wales Grade II* listed buildings in Ceredigion Government buildings completed in 1860