Larne Town Hall is a municipal structure in Upper Cross Street in

Larne Larne (, , the name of a Gaelic Ireland, Gaelic territory)Larne/Latharna
Placenames Database of Ireland. is a to ...

County Antrim County Antrim (named after the town of Antrim, County Antrim, Antrim, ) is one of the six counties of Northern Ireland, located within the historic Provinces of Ireland, province of Ulster. Adjoined to the north-east shore of Lough Neagh, the c ...

, Northern Ireland. The structure, which was the meeting place of Larne Borough Council, is a Grade B+

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 town hall was financed by a donation by the

Ulster-Scots Ulster Scots, may refer to: * Ulster Scots people * Ulster Scots dialect {{disambig Language and nationality disambiguation pages ...

merchant,

Charles McGarel Charles McGarel (1788–1876) was an Irish merchant and planter of Ulster Scots descent. In 1833, the British Government abolished slavery and compensated owners, such as McGarel, who became a major beneficiaries of this scheme. With his wealth ...

. It was designed by Alexander Tate in the

Gothic Revival style Gothic Revival (also referred to as Victorian Gothic or neo-Gothic) is an architectural movement that after a gradual build-up beginning in the second half of the 17th century became a widespread movement in the first half of the 19th century ...

, built Stewart & Company of

Belfast Belfast (, , , ; from ) is the capital city and principal port of Northern Ireland, standing on the banks of the River Lagan and connected to the open sea through Belfast Lough and the North Channel (Great Britain and Ireland), North Channel ...

rubble masonry Rubble masonry or 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. Some medieval cathedral walls have outer shells of ashlar wi ...

at a cost of £5,500 and was officially opened on 25 August 1870. The design involved an asymmetrical main frontage with eleven bays facing onto Upper Cross Street with the left hand end bay projected forward as a

pavilion In architecture, ''pavilion'' has several meanings; * It may be a subsidiary building that is either positioned separately or as an attachment to a main building. Often it is associated with pleasure. In palaces and traditional mansions of Asia ...

; the central bay featured a four-stage clock tower with an arched doorway flanked by

colonette A colonnette is a small slender column, usually decorative, which supports a Beam (structure), beam or lintel. Colonnettes have also been used to refer to a feature of furnishings such as a dressing table and Grandfather clock, case clock, and eve ...

s in the first stage, a

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 ...

in the second stage, an oculus in the third stage and a

belfry The belfry /ˈbɛlfri/ is a structure enclosing bells for ringing as part of a building, usually as part of a bell tower or steeple. It can also refer to the entire tower or building, particularly in continental Europe for such a tower attached ...

with a clock and 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 ...

al roof in the fourth stage. The left hand section featured six tall arched traceried windows on a single floor, while the right hand section was slightly set back and featured tall arched traceried windows on two floors. The traceried windows in both sections took the form of pairs of lancet windows separated by colonettes. The left hand end bay formed a caretaker's house. Internally, the principal rooms were the assembly hall, known as the "McGarel Hall", in the left hand section, the public reading room on the ground floor of the right hand section and the library and museum on the first floor of the right hand section. The town was advanced to the status of

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 ...

, with the town hall as its headquarters, in 1938. It also became a significant events venue and performers included the singer,

Bridie Gallagher Bridget "Bridie" Gallagher (7 September 1924 – 9 January 2012) was an Irish singer, affectionately known as "The Girl from Donegal". She has been described as "Ireland's first international pop star". Gallagher shot to fame in 1956 with her r ...

, in 1949, but it ceased to be the local seat of government when the council relocated to the Sir Thomas Dixon Buildings in the early 1960s. An extensive programme of refurbishment works, as well as the demolition of an existing annex and the construction of a new three-storey extension, was carried out by Tracey Brothers and completed in 2012. After particularly bad

winter storms A winter storm (also known as snow 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 and subarct ...

in March 2013, the

Prince of Wales Prince of Wales (, ; ) is a title traditionally given to the male heir apparent to the History of the English monarchy, English, and later, the British throne. The title originated with the Welsh rulers of Kingdom of Gwynedd, Gwynedd who, from ...

visited the town hall in June 2013 and met with members of the farming community who had been adversely affected by the extreme weather. In June 2020,

Amnesty International Amnesty International (also referred to as Amnesty or AI) is an international non-governmental organization focused on human rights, with its headquarters in the United Kingdom. The organization says that it has more than ten million members a ...

asked for the McGarel Hall to be renamed on the basis that, as a young man, McGarel had owned at least 1,000 slaves at a sugar plantation in

Demerara Demerara (; , ) is a historical region in the Guianas, on the north coast of South America, now part of the country of Guyana. It was a colony of the Dutch West India Company between 1745 and 1792 and a colony of the Dutch state from 1792 unti ...

in South America, and that part of his wealth had been generated from the compensation he had received for the loss of those slaves. Council officials said that they had no plans to change the name.

References

{{City and town halls in Ireland Government buildings completed in 1870 City and town halls in Northern Ireland Buildings and structures in Larne Grade B+ listed buildings

History

See also

References