Colyton Town Hall is a municipal building in the Market Place in Colyton, a town in

Devon Devon ( ; historically also known as Devonshire , ) is a ceremonial county in South West England. It is bordered by the Bristol Channel to the north, Somerset and Dorset to the east, the English Channel to the south, and Cornwall to the west ...

, England. The structure is currently used as a community events venue.

History

The town hall was commissioned by the local

feoffee Under the feudal system in England, a feoffee () is a trustee who holds a fief (or "fee"), that is to say an estate in land, for the use of a beneficial owner. The term is more fully stated as a feoffee to uses of the beneficial owner. The use ...

s after they decided to move from Old Church House, by St. Andrew's churchyard, which they had previously used as their meeting place. The site they chose for the new building was on the southwest side of the market Place. The foundation stone for the new building was laid by the chairman of the feoffees, Edward Henry Cuming, on 5 January 1927. It was designed by J. Archibald Lucas in the Tudor Revival style, built in red brick with stone dressings and was completed in 1929. The design involved an asymmetrical main frontage of seven bays facing onto the Market Street. The second bay featured a pair of arched openings separated by a column and decorated with fine carvings in the

spandrel A spandrel is a roughly triangular space, usually found in pairs, between the top of an arch and a rectangular frame, between the tops of two adjacent arches, or one of the four spaces between a circle within a square. They are frequently fil ...

s. The fourth, fifth and sixth bays formed a section which was projected forward. The fifth bay contained a large arched opening with an

archivolt An archivolt (or voussure) is an ornamental Molding (decorative), moulding or band following the curve on the underside of an arch. It is composed of bands of ornamental mouldings (or other architectural elements) surrounding an arched opening, ...

which was also decorated with fine carvings in the spandrels; there was a tripartite

mullion A mullion is a vertical element that forms a division between units of a window or screen, or is used decoratively. It is also often used as a division between double doors. When dividing adjacent window units its primary purpose is a rigid sup ...

ed and transomed window with cusped heads on the first floor and a date stone in the gable above. The fourth and sixth bays were fenestrated by single windows with

hood mould In architecture, a hood mould, hood, label mould (from Latin , lip), drip mould or dripstone is an external moulded projection from a wall over an opening to throw off rainwater, historically often in form of a '' pediment''. This moulding can be ...

s on both floors, while the other bays were fenestrated by a series of tri-partite or bi-partite windows with hood moulds. There were

modillion A modillion is an ornate bracket, more horizontal in shape and less imposing than a corbel. They are often seen underneath a Cornice (architecture), cornice which helps to support them. Modillions are more elaborate than dentils (literally transl ...

s jutting out of the

eaves The eaves are the edges of the roof which overhang the face of a wall and, normally, project beyond the side of a building. The eaves form an overhang to throw water clear of the walls and may be highly decorated as part of an architectural sty ...

and there was a pitched roof above. Internally, the principal room was a large assembly hall, which was long and wide and equipped with a stage; there was also a meeting room, and a kitchen. From an early stage the town hall became a regular venue for meetings of the Colyton Parish Council. The building became a regular venue for public events: in March 1997, members of period music chamber ensemble, Café Mozart, conducted a concert with flute and piano there, and, in March 2019, an exhibition was organised by the

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to remind people of the flood of July 1968 which devasted parts of the town. In November 2020, the foundation stone, which had become very worn and difficult to read, was replaced by a bronze plaque, inscribed with the same details. A concert was held in the town hall, in August 2023, to commemorate the life of the journalist and author, Seán Day-Lewis, who had lived in Colyton.

References

{{reflist City and town halls in Devon Colyton, Devon Government buildings completed in 1929