Tenterden Town Hall is a municipal building in the High Street in

Tenterden Tenterden is a town and civil parish in the Borough of Ashford in Kent, England. The 2021 census published the population of the parish to be 8,186. Geography Tenterden is connected to Kent's county town of Maidstone by the A262 road an ...

Kent Kent is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South East England. It is bordered by Essex across the Thames Estuary to the north, the Strait of Dover to the south-east, East Sussex to the south-west, Surrey to the west, and Gr ...

, England. The structure, which is the meeting place of Tenterden Town 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 ...

History

The first municipal building in the town was a

medieval In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the 5th to the late 15th centuries, similarly to the post-classical period of World history (field), global history. It began with the fall of the West ...

court hall which was burnt down by an inmate who had been incarcerated in the debtors' cells in March 1661. The borough council subsequently met in public houses until, in the late 18th century, the civic leaders decided to commission a dedicated building. The site they selected was owned by John Samson, who also owned the Woolpack Inn. After the council had acquired a long lease on the right-hand section of the site, construction started in 1790. The new building was designed in the Italianate style, built in brick with a

stucco Stucco or render is a construction material made of aggregates, a binder, and water. Stucco is applied wet and hardens to a very dense solid. It is used as a decorative coating for walls and ceilings, exterior walls, and as a sculptural and ...

finish at a cost of £1,000 and was completed in 1792. The design involved a main frontage with five bays facing onto the High Street; the right-hand section, which was symmetrical, featured a doorway flanked by

pilaster In architecture, a pilaster is both a load-bearing section of thickened wall or column integrated into a wall, and a purely decorative element in classical architecture which gives the appearance of a supporting column and articulates an ext ...

s and by round headed openings with a prominent Venetian window on the first floor. The left-hand section featured a carriageway on the left and a three-part

sash window A sash window or hung sash window is made of one or more movable panels, or "sashes". The individual sashes are traditionally paned windows, but can now contain an individual sheet (or sheets, in the case of double glazing) of glass. History ...

on the right, while the first floor was fenestrated by a single sash window on the left and by a three-part sash window on the right. Internally, the rooms occupied by the council, which were in the right-hand section, were the grand jury room on the ground floor and the assembly hall on the first floor. The roof of the building was repaired after it was badly damaged in a fire in September 1879, a

balcony A balcony (from , "scaffold") is a platform projecting from the wall of a building, supported by columns or console brackets, and enclosed with a balustrade, usually above the ground floor. They are commonly found on multi-level houses, apartme ...

supported by four columns was installed in May 1912 and the freehold in the property was acquired in February 1922. The council secured ownership of the left-hand section of the building as well in October 1925, so allowing a mayor's parlour to be established on the first floor. The building was also extended to the north to create a town clerk's office in 1936 and it was refurbished, with the Venetian window being replaced, in 1973. The town hall continued to serve as the headquarters of the borough council for much of the 20th century, but ceased to be the local seat of government when the enlarged Ashford Borough Council was formed in 1974. It subsequently became the meeting place of Tenterden Town Council as well as an approved venue for weddings and civil partnership ceremonies. In January 2021, the town council announced plans to carry out a comprehensive restoration of the building, which would include the replacement of the 1930s extension, to a design by local architects, Theis & Khan, at a proposed cost of £1.75 million. Works of art in the town hall include a portrait by Lance Calkin of the member of parliament, Colonel James Palmer, a portrait by Daisy Radcliffe Beresford of Reverend Joseph Robert Diggle and a portrait by William Hoare of the master of Sunbury School, Samuel Curteis.

References

{{reflist Government buildings completed in 1792 Grade II listed buildings in Kent Tenterden City and town halls in Kent