Chudleigh Town Hall is a municipal building in Market Way,

Chudleigh Chudleigh () is an ancient wool town located within the Teignbridge District Council area of Devon, England between Newton Abbot and Exeter. The electoral ward with the same name had a population of 6,125 at the 2011 census. Geography Chu ...

Devon Devon ( , historically known as Devonshire , ) is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in South West England. The most populous settlement in Devon is the city of Plymouth, followed by Devon's county town, the city of Exeter. Devon is ...

, England. The town hall, which is the meeting place of Chudleigh 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 I ...

History

The first municipal building in the town was an old market house which was badly damaged in the great fire which destroyed much of the town on 22 May 1807. Shortly afterwards, a new market house was erected on the site of the King's Arms in what is now Market Way; it was a rectangular building, open on the ground floor, with storage capacity on the first floor and a turret on the roof. In the late 1850s, having established that the market house in Market Way was structurally unstable, the civic leaders decided to replace it with a new structure on the same site. 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 Neoclassical architecture, Neoclassicism, the Italianate style drew its inspiration from the models and architectural vocabular ...

, built in

rubble masonry Rubble stone is rough, uneven building stone not laid in regular courses. It may fill the core of a wall which is faced with unit masonry such as brick or ashlar. Analogously, some medieval cathedral walls are outer shells of ashlar with an inn ...

at a cost of £600 and was completed in 1865. The design involved a symmetrical main frontage with three bays facing southeast towards New Exeter Street; the central bay, which projected forward, featured two round headed openings with architraves and

keystones A keystone (or capstone) is the wedge-shaped stone at the apex of a masonry arch or typically round-shaped one at the apex of a vault. In both cases it is the final piece placed during construction and locks all the stones into position, all ...

on the ground floor, three round headed

sash window A sash window or hung sash window is made of one or more movable panels, or "sashes". The individual sashes are traditionally paned windows, but can now contain an individual sheet (or sheets, in the case of double glazing) of glass. History ...

s set close together in the style of a

Venetian window A Venetian window (also known as a Serlian window) is a large tripartite window which is a key element in Palladian architecture. Although Sebastiano Serlio (1475–1554) did not invent it, the window features largely in the work of the Italian ...

on the first floor and a gable above containing an

oculus Oculus (a term from Latin ''oculus'', meaning 'eye'), may refer to the following Architecture * Oculus (architecture), a circular opening in the centre of a dome or in a wall Arts, entertainment, and media * ''Oculus'' (film), a 2013 American s ...

. The outer bays were fenestrated by segmental sash windows on both floors. Internally, the principal room was the assembly hall on the first floor which was used as an events venue for balls, concerts and lectures. In the 1880s, the internal layout of the first floor of the building was re-configured to create a chapel for religious services. In the 19th century,

petty session Courts of petty session, established from around the 1730s, were local courts consisting of magistrates, held for each petty sessional division (usually based on the county divisions known as hundreds) in England, Wales, and Ireland. The sessi ...

hearings alternated between Chudleigh Town Hall and

North Tawton Town Hall North Tawton Town Hall is a municipal building in The Square, North Tawton, Devon, England. The town hall, which is the meeting place of North Tawton Town Council, is a Grade II listed building. History Markets had been held in the town since 1 ...

. During the

First World War World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fig ...

, a

Voluntary Aid Detachment The Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD) was a voluntary unit of civilians providing nursing care for military personnel in the United Kingdom and various other countries in the British Empire. The most important periods of operation for these units we ...

hospital was established at Alpha House in Fore Street and fund-raining events were held at the town hall to support the hospital: significant contributors included Lewis Clifford, 9th Baron Clifford of Ugbrooke House and Sir Edward Chaning Wills of Harcombe House. For much of the 20th century the parish of Chudleigh was administered by Newton Abbot Rural District Council, but, following the implementation of local government re-organisation in 1974, Chudleigh elected its own town council with offices in the town hall. In February 2009, the former chapel and the meeting room on the first floor were used as dormitories for motorists who had become stranded in a

snow storm A winter storm is an event in which wind coincides with varieties of precipitation that only occur at freezing temperatures, such as snow, mixed snow and rain, or freezing rain. In temperate continental climates, these storms are not ne ...

while travelling on the

A38 road The A38, parts of which are known as Devon Expressway, Bristol Road and Gloucester Road, is a major A-class trunk road in England. The road runs from Bodmin in Cornwall to Mansfield in Nottinghamshire. It is long, making it the longest two-d ...

Dartmoor Dartmoor is an upland area in southern Devon, England. The moorland and surrounding land has been protected by National Park status since 1951. Dartmoor National Park covers . The granite which forms the uplands dates from the Carboniferous ...

. The town hall had been designated as an Emergency Rest Centre. A new roll of honour, intended to commemorate the lives of local service personnel who had died in the First World War and which consolidated the names previously listed in churches around the parish, was unveiled in the town hall in August 2014.

References

{{reflist Government buildings completed in 1865 City and town halls in Devon Chudleigh Grade II listed buildings in Devon