Padiham Town Hall is a municipal building in Burnley Road,

Padiham Padiham ( ) is a market town and civil parishes in England, civil parish on the River Calder, Lancashire, River Calder, in the Borough of Burnley in Lancashire, England, Lancashire, England. It is located north west of Burnley, and north ea ...

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 was the headquarters of Padiham Urban District 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 ...

. It is the meeting place of Padiham Town Council.

History

Shortly after it had been created in 1873, the

local board of health A local board of health (or simply a ''local board'') was a local authority in urban areas of England and Wales from 1848 to 1894. They were formed in response to cholera epidemics and were given powers to control sewers, clean the streets, regulat ...

established itself in a small office in Mill Street. The area became an urban district in 1894 and population growth associated with the increasing number of

coal mine Coal mining is the process of resource extraction, extracting coal from the ground or from a mine. Coal is valued for its Energy value of coal, energy content and since the 1880s has been widely used to Electricity generation, generate electr ...

s and

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 area continued into the 1920s. In the early 1930s the former

Lord Lieutenant of Lancashire This is a list of people who have served as Lord Lieutenant of Lancashire. The Lord Lieutenant is the King's personal representative in each county of the United Kingdom. Historically the Lord Lieutenant was responsible for organising the county's ...

, Lord Shuttleworth of Gawthorpe Hall, urged civic leaders to procure a dedicated town hall: the site they selected had been occupied by the Bridge End Cotton Mill, an ugly building known locally as the "Wonder Mill". Construction started in March 1936. The new building, which was designed by Bradshaw Gass & Hope in the

neoclassical style Neoclassicism, also spelled Neo-classicism, emerged as a Western cultural movement in the decorative and visual arts, literature, theatre, music, and architecture that drew inspiration from the art and culture of classical antiquity. Neoclassici ...

and built in

Accrington Accrington is a town in the Hyndburn borough of Lancashire, England. It lies about east of Blackburn, west of Burnley, east of Preston, north of Manchester and is situated on the culverted River Hyndburn. Commonly abbreviated by locals to ...

red brick with stone facings, was officially opened by the leader of

London County Council The London County Council (LCC) was the principal local government body for the County of London throughout its existence from 1889 to 1965, and the first London-wide general municipal authority to be directly elected. It covered the area today ...

Herbert Morrison Herbert Stanley Morrison, Baron Morrison of Lambeth, (3 January 1888 – 6 March 1965) was a British politician who held a variety of senior positions in the Cabinet as a member of the Labour Party. During the inter-war period, he was Minist ...

, on 26 February 1938. The design involved a symmetrical main frontage with eleven bays facing onto Burnley Road; the central section of three bays, which slightly projected forward, featured a full-height

tetrastyle A portico is a porch leading to the entrance of a building, or extended as a colonnade, with a roof structure over a walkway, supported by columns or enclosed by walls. This idea was widely used in ancient Greece and has influenced many cultu ...

portico A portico is a porch leading to the entrance of a building, or extended as a colonnade, with a roof structure over a walkway, supported by columns or enclosed by walls. This idea was widely used in ancient Greece and has influenced many cu ...

with

Corinthian order The Corinthian order (, ''Korinthiakós rythmós''; ) is the last developed and most ornate of the three principal classical orders of Ancient Greek architecture and Ancient Roman architecture, Roman architecture. The other two are the Doric or ...

columns and a

pediment Pediments are a form of gable in classical architecture, usually of a triangular shape. Pediments are placed above the horizontal structure of the cornice (an elaborated lintel), or entablature if supported by columns.Summerson, 130 In an ...

bearing the town's

coat of arms A coat of arms is a heraldry, heraldic communication design, visual design on an escutcheon (heraldry), escutcheon (i.e., shield), surcoat, or tabard (the last two being outer garments), originating in Europe. The coat of arms on an escutcheon f ...

. At roof level, there was a

turret Turret may refer to: * Turret (architecture), a small tower that projects above the wall of a building * Gun turret, a mechanism of a projectile-firing weapon * Optical microscope#Objective turret (revolver or revolving nose piece), Objective turre ...

with a clock. Internally, the principal rooms were the council chamber on the first floor, which was panelled with Australian walnut, and the theatre, which was a single-storey structure at the rear of the building with an

Art Deco Art Deco, short for the French (), is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design that first Art Deco in Paris, appeared in Paris in the 1910s just before World War I and flourished in the United States and Europe during the 1920 ...

proscenium arch. The building continued to serve as the headquarters of the local urban district council for much of the 20th century but ceased to be the local seat of government when the enlarged Burnley Borough Council was formed in 1974. Instead, it became the home of Padiham Town Council when it was formed in 2002. The building was badly damaged by flooding in the Boxing Day Flood in December 2015 and a programme of repair works to the theatre (by then known as the ballroom) was completed in January 2018. A further programme of refurbishment works, for the rest of the building, costing £331,000 commenced in December 2020.

References

{{Borough of Burnley buildings Government buildings completed in 1938 City and town halls in Lancashire Padiham Grade II listed buildings in Lancashire

History

See also

References