Worksop Town Hall is a municipal building in Potter Street,

Worksop Worksop ( ) is a market town in the Bassetlaw District in Nottinghamshire, England. It is located south of Doncaster, south-east of Sheffield and north of Nottingham. Located close to Nottinghamshire's borders with South Yorkshire and Derbys ...

Nottinghamshire Nottinghamshire (; abbreviated ''Notts.'') is a ceremonial county in the East Midlands of England. The county is bordered by South Yorkshire to the north-west, Lincolnshire to the east, Leicestershire to the south, and Derbyshire to the west. Th ...

, England. The town hall, which was the headquarters of Worksop Borough 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 used for meetings of

Bassetlaw District Council Bassetlaw may refer to: * Bassetlaw (UK Parliament constituency), Nottinghamshire constituency in the British House of Commons * Bassetlaw District General Hospital, a National Health Service hospital in Worksop, Nottinghamshire * Bassetlaw Distr ...

, whose main offices are in an adjoining building.

History

The building was originally commissioned by a group of local investors who invested £5,000 to establish a

corn exchange A corn exchange is a building where merchants trade grains. The word "corn" in British English denotes all cereal grains, such as wheat and barley; in the United States these buildings were called grain exchanges. Such trade was common in towns ...

: the site they selected had been occupied by a row of houses. The new corn exchange was designed by Isaac Charles Gilbert in the

Italianate style The Italianate style was a distinct 19th-century phase in the history of Classical architecture. Like Palladianism and Neoclassicism, the Italianate style combined its inspiration from the models and architectural vocabulary of 16th-century Ita ...

, built in red brick with stone dressings and was officially opened with an event attended by the

lord of the manor Lord of the manor is a title that, in Anglo-Saxon England and Norman England, referred to the landholder of a historical rural estate. The titles date to the English Feudalism, feudal (specifically English feudal barony, baronial) system. The ...

, the

Duke of Newcastle Duke of Newcastle upon Tyne was a title that was created three times, once in the Peerage of England and twice in the Peerage of Great Britain. The first grant of the title was made in 1665 to William Cavendish, 1st Duke of Newcastle, Willi ...

, in July 1851. The design involved a symmetrical main frontage with five bays facing onto Potter Street with the end bays slightly projected forward; the central section of three bays originally featured a flight of steps leading up to three doorways with carved keystones. The arms of the Duke of Newcastle, carved in stone, were installed on the front of the building. There was an

aedicule In ancient Roman religion, an ''aedicula'' (: ''aediculae'') is a small shrine, and in classical architecture refers to a niche covered by a pediment or entablature supported by a pair of columns and typically framing a statue,"aedicula, n." ''O ...

casement window A casement window is a window that is attached to its frame by one or more hinges at the side. They are used singly or in pairs within a common frame, in which case they are hinged on the outside. Casement windows are often held open using a c ...

flanked by two hooded casement windows on the first floor, above which was an open pediment containing a clock ('made by Mr Barlow'), which had been donated by the Duke of Newcastle. The outer bays featured casement windows flanked by

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

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 supporting curved pediments and there was a central

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 ...

on the roof. Internally, the principal rooms included a courtroom, which was used for

petty session Courts of petty session, established from around the 1730s, were local courts consisting of magistrates, held for each petty sessional division (usually based on the county divisions known as hundreds) in England, Wales, and Ireland. The session ...

s, and an assembly room, which was used by the county court. On the ground floor, alongside the corn exchange hall itself, a library was established for use by the Reading Society and by the

Mechanics Institute Mechanics' institutes, also known as mechanics' institutions, sometimes simply known as institutes, and also called schools of arts (especially in the Australian colonies), were educational establishments originally formed to provide adult ed ...

. The year after the building was completed Worksop was made a local board district following a significant increase in population, largely associated with

coal mining 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 ...

. From its first meeting on 16 August 1852 the board met at the corn exchange. In the 1870s, a collapse in corn prices caused by international competition precipitated financial difficulties for the owners of the corn exchange, and so the local board acquired the building in 1882. Local board districts were reconstituted as urban districts in 1894. The library, which became accessible by the general public, relocated to Watson Road in 1902. A war memorial to commemorate the lives of local service personnel who had died in the

Second Boer War The Second Boer War (, , 11 October 189931 May 1902), also known as the Boer War, Transvaal War, Anglo–Boer War, or South African War, was a conflict fought between the British Empire and the two Boer republics (the South African Republic and ...

was designed and made by local sculptor, George Colton. It took the form of a

Carrara marble Carrara marble, or Luna marble (''marmor lunense'') to the Romans, is a type of white or blue-grey marble popular for use in sculpture and building decor. It has been quarried since Roman times in the mountains just outside the city of Carrara ...

tablet which was installed on the right hand side of the building and unveiled by Field Marshal Lord Grenfell on 1 August 1903. The area 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 1931. In 1910 the council bought the local water company, and supplemented the limited office space in the town hall with the water company's old offices at 36–38 Carlton Road, which had been built in 1900. In the 1970s a two-storey, 18th century house to the east of the town hall on Potter Street was remodelled with an archway for vehicles replacing the old shopfront. At the same the steps leading up to the town hall were removed and the doorways replaced with three round headed windows – access to the building was then obtained through the new archway. Following local government reorganisation in 1974, the enlarged

initially used both the town hall, 36–38 Carlton Road and the former Worksop Rural District Council offices at Highfield House on Carlton Road, supplemented by other offices in Bridge Street and Victoria Square. New council offices were built on Potter Street, immediately adjoining the east side of the town hall. The new building was opened by

Queen Elizabeth II Elizabeth II (Elizabeth Alexandra Mary; 21 April 19268 September 2022) was Queen of the United Kingdom and other Commonwealth realms from 6 February 1952 until Death and state funeral of Elizabeth II, her death in 2022. ...

on 5 June 1981 and became known as the Queen's Building. The council holds its meetings both at

Retford Town Hall Retford Town Hall is a municipal building in The Square, Retford, Nottinghamshire, England. The town hall, which was the meeting place of Retford Borough Council, is a grade II listed building. It is still used for meetings of Bassetlaw Distric ...

and in Worksop Town Hall. A major programme of refurbishment works to the town hall was completed in August 2007.

References

{{reflist Government buildings completed in 1851 City and town halls in Nottinghamshire Worksop Grade II listed buildings in Nottinghamshire Corn exchanges in England