Sowerby Bridge Town Hall is a former municipal building in Town Hall Street in

Sowerby Bridge Sowerby Bridge ( ) is a market town in the Upper Calder Valley in Calderdale in West Yorkshire, England. The Calderdale Council ward population at the 2011 census was 11,703. History The town was originally a fording point over the once muc ...

West Yorkshire West Yorkshire is a metropolitan and ceremonial county in the Yorkshire and Humber Region of England. It is an inland and upland county having eastward-draining valleys while taking in the moors of the Pennines. West Yorkshire came into exis ...

, England. The building, which was initially used as the offices of the

local board of health Local boards or local boards of health were local authorities 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, regulate environment ...

and as a public events venue, then as the home of the local Liberal Club and later as a bank branch, is a Grade II

listed building In the United Kingdom, a listed building or listed structure is one that has been placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Historic Environment Scotland in Scotland, in Wales, and the Northern I ...

History

Following significant population growth, largely associated with the

worsted Worsted ( or ) is a high-quality type of wool yarn, the fabric made from this yarn, and a yarn weight category. The name derives from Worstead, a village in the English county of Norfolk. That village, together with North Walsham and Aylsham ...

and

cotton Cotton is a soft, fluffy staple fiber that grows in a boll, or protective case, around the seeds of the cotton plants of the genus '' Gossypium'' in the mallow family Malvaceae. The fiber is almost pure cellulose, and can contain minor p ...

industries, a

was established in the Sowerby Bridge area in 1856. In response, a group of local businessmen formed a company to finance and commission a town hall for the area: the site they selected was a prominent location on the north side of the bridge across the River Calder. The foundation stone for the new building was laid by

Sir Henry Edwards, 1st Baronet Sir Henry Edwards, 1st Baronet (20 July 1812 – 23 April 1886) was an English Conservative politician who sat in the House of Commons in two periods between 1847 and 1869. Edwards was born at Pye Nest in Halifax, Yorkshire, and was the son of H ...

on 12 May 1856. It was designed by William Perkin and Elisha Backhouse in the

Italianate style The Italianate style was a distinct 19th-century phase in the history of Classical architecture. Like Palladianism and Neoclassical architecture, Neoclassicism, the Italianate style drew its inspiration from the models and architectural vocabular ...

, built in

ashlar Ashlar () is finely dressed (cut, worked) stone, either an individual stone that has been worked until squared, or a structure built from such stones. Ashlar is the finest stone masonry unit, generally rectangular cuboid, mentioned by Vitr ...

stone and was officially opened on 30 September 1857. The design involved a symmetrical rounded frontage at the junction of Town Hall Street and Hollins Mill Lane. The rounded frontage took the form of a three-stage tower with a rusticated section in the first stage, a

Venetian window A Venetian window (also known as a Serlian window) is a large tripartite window which is a key element in Palladian architecture. Although Sebastiano Serlio (1475–1554) did not invent it, the window features largely in the work of the Italian ...

with a

balustrade A baluster is an upright support, often a vertical moulded shaft, square, or lathe-turned form found in stairways, parapets, and other architectural features. In furniture construction it is known as a spindle. Common materials used in its ...

as well as

colonette A colonnette is a small slender column, usually decorative, which supports a beam or lintel. Colonettes have also been used to refer to a feature of furnishings such as a dressing table and case clock, and even studied by archeologists in Roman ...

s and

pilaster In classical architecture, a pilaster is an architectural element used to give the appearance of a supporting column and to articulate an extent of wall, with only an ornamental function. It consists of a flat surface raised from the main wal ...

s supporting a segmental

pediment Pediments are gables, usually of a triangular shape. Pediments are placed above the horizontal structure of the lintel, or entablature, if supported by columns. Pediments can contain an overdoor and are usually topped by hood moulds. A pedim ...

in the second stage, and a section with six faces separated by

Ionic order The Ionic order is one of the three canonic orders of classical architecture, the other two being the Doric and the Corinthian. There are two lesser orders: the Tuscan (a plainer Doric), and the rich variant of Corinthian called the composi ...

pilasters in the third stage. The tower was surmounted by a

dome A dome () is an architectural element similar to the hollow upper half of a sphere. There is significant overlap with the term cupola, which may also refer to a dome or a structure on top of a dome. The precise definition of a dome has been a ...

and a

finial A finial (from '' la, finis'', end) or hip-knob is an element marking the top or end of some object, often formed to be a decorative feature. In architecture, it is a small decorative device, employed to emphasize the apex of a dome, spire, t ...

. The elevations along Tower Hill Street and Hollins Mill Lane extended for three bays on each side with the end bays slightly projected forward. The middle bays on each side were fenestrated by triple round headed windows on both floors while the outer bays contained round headed openings on the ground floor and single rounded windows on the first floor. The windows were enhanced by

window cill A windowsill (also written window sill or window-sill, and less frequently in British English, cill) is the horizontal structure or surface at the bottom of a window. Window sills serve to structurally support and hold the window in place. Th ...

s and segmental pediments supported by

brackets A bracket is either of two tall fore- or back-facing punctuation marks commonly used to isolate a segment of text or data from its surroundings. Typically deployed in symmetric pairs, an individual bracket may be identified as a 'left' or ' ...

and, at roof level, there was a

parapet A parapet is a barrier that is an extension of the wall at the edge of a roof, terrace, balcony, walkway or other structure. The word comes ultimately from the Italian ''parapetto'' (''parare'' 'to cover/defend' and ''petto'' 'chest/breast'). ...

. Internally, the principal room was an auditorium capable of accommodating 700 people, in the Hollins Mill Lane wing. A clock, financed by

public subscription Subscription refers to the process of investors signing up and committing to invest in a financial instrument, before the actual closing of the purchase. The term comes from the Latin word ''subscribere''. Historical Praenumeration An early form ...

and intended to serve as memorial to local service personnel who had died in the

Crimean War The Crimean War, , was fought from October 1853 to February 1856 between Russia and an ultimately victorious alliance of the Ottoman Empire, France, the United Kingdom and Piedmont-Sardinia. Geopolitical causes of the war included t ...

, was installed in the third stage of the tower in 1863. The directors of the company who had developed the building let part of the structure to the local board of health for use as their offices. They had hoped that the local board would ultimately purchase the building but this never transpired. After the resolution of a dispute with a director who disapproved of the sale, the directors instead sold it to the Halifax Joint Stock Banking Company, later known as the West Yorkshire Bank, in May 1881. However, the auditorium continued to be used as a public events venue for concerts and other performances for the rest of the 19th century. The complex was then acquired by the Sowerby Bridge Liberal Association for use as a Liberal Club in January 1903. After a period of declining use, and then a period of disuse in the 1950s, the auditorium and the rest of the Hollins Mill Lane wing was demolished and the remaining Town Hall Street wing became a branch of Lloyds Bank in 1963. Following the closure of the Lloyds Bank branch in 2018, the building was vacant again, until it was acquired by a restauranteur, Raj Panesar, who began work to convert it into a restaurant in March 2022.

References

{{City and town halls in West Yorkshire Government buildings completed in 1857 City and town halls in West Yorkshire Grade II listed buildings in West Yorkshire Sowerby Bridge