Rotherham Town Hall is a municipal building in The Crofts, off Moorgate Street in

Rotherham Rotherham ( ) is a market town in South Yorkshire, England. It lies at the confluence of the River Rother, South Yorkshire, River Rother, from which the town gets its name, and the River Don, Yorkshire, River Don. It is the largest settlement ...

South Yorkshire South Yorkshire is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in the Yorkshire and the Humber region of England. It borders North Yorkshire and West Yorkshire to the north, the East Riding of Yorkshire to the north-east, Lincolnshire ...

, England.

History

The first town hall in Rotherham, which acted as a public meeting place, a venue for the quarters sessions and also the home of the town's grammar school, was financed 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 and opened in the Market Place in 1743. This was replaced by a second town hall, which also acted as a local courthouse: it was again financed by the feoffees and opened on a site "near the old college" in 1826. A third town hall, which once more acted as a courthouse and incorporated assembly rooms, opened in Howard Street in 1853 and was then remodelled to a design by a Mr Lovell in 1897. After deciding that the third town hall was no longer adequate for their needs, civic leaders at

Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council is the local authority of the Metropolitan Borough of Rotherham in South Yorkshire, England. It is a metropolitan borough council and provides the majority of local government services in the borough. The ...

decided to acquire a fourth building: the building they selected was located in the Crofts which had originally formed part of the town's old cattle market in the 19th century. The building, which had been designed 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 white

Portland stone Portland stone is a limestone geological formation (formally named the Portland Stone Formation) dating to the Tithonian age of the Late Jurassic that is quarried on the Isle of Portland in Dorset, England. The quarries are cut in beds of whi ...

, had opened as the West Riding County Courthouse in 1929. The design for the courthouse involved a symmetrical main frontage with fifteen bays facing onto Moorgate Street; the central section of seven bays, which slightly projected forward and was taller than the rest of the building, featured five round headed windows on the ground floor flanked by two doorways each flanked by

Doric order The Doric order is one of the three orders of ancient Greek and later Roman architecture; the other two canonical orders were the Ionic and the Corinthian. The Doric is most easily recognized by the simple circular capitals at the top of t ...

columns supporting pediments (one doorway for the

nisi prius ''Nisi prius'' () (Latin: "unless before") is a historical term in English law. In the 19th century, it came to be used to denote generally all legal actions tried before judges of the King's Bench Division and in the early twentieth century for a ...

court and one for the

Crown Court The Crown Court is the criminal trial court, court of first instance in England and Wales responsible for hearing all indictable offences, some Hybrid offence, either way offences and appeals of the decisions of magistrates' courts. It is ...

); there were three round headed windows on the first floor: the building had also incorporated a police station. The old courthouse was acquired by the council for the use as their meeting place in May 1985. Following a protracted procurement process, the magistrates' new facilities at the Statutes, off Main Street, eventually became available and they were able to vacate the building in May 1994. A

cannon A cannon is a large-caliber gun classified as a type of artillery, which usually launches a projectile using explosive chemical propellant. Gunpowder ("black powder") was the primary propellant before the invention of smokeless powder during th ...

, manufactured by Samuel Walker & Company in

Masbrough Masbrough is a suburb of Rotherham, South Yorkshire, England. It was named as the west of Rotherham by the middle of the Industrial Revolution, namely that part on the left bank of River Don, South Yorkshire, Don. Historic counties of England, ...

and recovered from use on a naval vessel, was installed outside the building in 1995. In the mid-1990s, civic leaders initiated a programme of works to convert the old courthouse into a town hall. Internally, the principal rooms created by these works were the council chamber, the mayor's suite and the committee rooms. A further programme of works to update and refurbish the facilities was carried out during 2010. A plaque to commemorate the nomination of Mary Maclagen as the town's first woman councillor was unveiled in the town hall in December 2018.

Notes

References

{{reflist Buildings and structures in Rotherham City and town halls in South Yorkshire Government buildings completed in 1929

History

See also

Notes

References