Colne Town Hall is a municipal building in Albert Road,

Colne Colne () is a market town and civil parishes in England, civil parish in the Borough of Pendle in Lancashire, England. The town is northeast of Nelson, Lancashire, Nelson, northeast of Burnley and east of Preston, Lancashire, Preston. The ...

Lancashire Lancashire ( , ; abbreviated ''Lancs'') is a ceremonial county in North West England. It is bordered by Cumbria to the north, North Yorkshire and West Yorkshire to the east, Greater Manchester and Merseyside to the south, and the Irish Sea to ...

, England. The town hall, which is the meeting place of Colne Town Council, 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

After significant population growth associated with the increasing number of

cotton mill A cotton mill is a building that houses spinning or weaving machinery for the production of yarn or cloth from cotton, an important product during the Industrial Revolution in the development of the factory system. Although some were driven ...

s in the town, the area became an urban district in 1894. In this context, civic leaders decided the procure a dedicated town hall; the site selected was a vacant site at the corner of two rows of residential properties (Albert Road and New Market Street). The new building, which was designed by

Alfred Waterhouse Alfred Waterhouse (19 July 1830 – 22 August 1905) was an English architect, particularly associated with Gothic Revival architecture, although he designed using other architectural styles as well. He is perhaps best known for his designs ...

in the Gothic style, was built with

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 officially opened by the chairman of the council, Samuel Catlow, on 13 January 1894. The design involved a symmetrical main frontage with five bays facing onto Albert Road; the central bay featured a doorway flanked by colonettes supporting a stone arch on the ground floor; there was an

oriel window An oriel window is a form of bay window which protrudes from the main wall of a building but does not reach to the ground. Supported by corbels, bracket (architecture), brackets, or similar cantilevers, an oriel window generally projects from an ...

on the first floor and a four-stage

clock tower Clock towers are a specific type of structure that house a turret clock and have one or more clock faces on the upper exterior walls. Many clock towers are freestanding structures but they can also adjoin or be located on top of another building ...

with

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 above. Internally, the principal rooms were the council chamber and the mayor's parlour. The Cambridge quarter-chiming clock was made by Potts of Leeds, and the five bells by Taylor of Loughborough. A large paving stone, which was hewn from rock from Clough Fold Quarry near Rawtenstall and which measured by and weighed , was laid outside the front door of the building during its construction. Investigations conducted by a research team funded by 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 ...

indicated that this paving stone is only exceeded in surface area by the large paving stones in front of St George's Hall in

Liverpool Liverpool is a port City status in the United Kingdom, city and metropolitan borough in Merseyside, England. It is situated on the eastern side of the River Mersey, Mersey Estuary, near the Irish Sea, north-west of London. With a population ...

. After the area achieved

municipal borough A municipal borough was a type of local government Local government is a generic term for the lowest tiers of governance or public administration within a particular sovereign state. Local governments typically constitute a subdivision of ...

status on 14 September 1895, the building became the headquarters of the new borough and Councillor Samuel Catlow became its first mayor. The building continued to serve as the headquarters of the borough council for much of the 20th century but ceased to be the local seat of government when the enlarged Pendle Borough Council was formed in 1974. It became the meeting place of Colne Town Council when it was formed in 2008. The town council also took over responsibility for the management of the building in October 2017 and, following a programme of refurbishment works on the ground floor to create "the Waterhouse Bar" as a space for drinks receptions, the town council re-opened the council chamber and the mayor's parlour as venues for marriages and civil partnership ceremonies in February 2020.

References

{{Borough of Pendle buildings Government buildings completed in 1894 City and town halls in Lancashire Colne Grade II listed buildings in Lancashire

History

See also

References