Chapter 11

OLD MUNICIPAL BUILDINGS

No class of buildings has suffered more than the old town halls of our country boroughs. Many of these towns have become decayed and all their ancient glories have departed. They were once flourishing places in the palmy days of the cloth trade, and could boast of fairs and markets and a considerable number of inhabitants and wealthy merchants; but the tide of trade has flowed elsewhere. The invention of steam and complex machinery necessitating proximity to coal-fields has turned its course elsewhere, to the smoky regions of Yorkshire and Lancashire, and the old town has lost its prosperity and its power. Its charter has gone; it can boast of no municipal corporation; hence the town hall is scarcely needed save for some itinerant Thespians, an occasional public meeting, or as a storehouse of rubbish. It begins to fall into decay, and the decayed town is not rich enough, or public-spirited enough, to prop its weakened timbers. For the sake of the safety of the public it has to come down.

On the other hand, an influx of prosperity often dooms the aged town hall to destruction. It vanishes before a wave of prosperity. The borough has enlarged its borders. It has become quite a great town and transacts much business. The old shops have given place to grand emporiums with large plate-glass windows, wherein are exhibited the most recent fashions of London and Paris, and motor-cars can be bought, and all is very brisk and up-to-date. The old town hall is now deemed a very poor and inadequate building. It is small, inconvenient, and unsuited to the taste of the municipal councillors, whose ideas have expanded with their trade. The Mayor and Corporation meet, and decide to build a brand-new town hall replete with every luxury and convenience. The old must vanish.

And yet, how picturesque these ancient council chambers are. They usually stand in the centre of the market-place, and have an undercroft, the upper storey resting on pillars. Beneath this shelter the market women display their wares and fix their stalls on market days, and there you will perhaps see the fire-engine, at least the old primitive one which was in use before a grand steam fire-engine had been purchased and housed in a station of its own. The building has high pointed gables and mullioned windows, a tiled roof mellowed with age, and a finely wrought vane, which is a credit to the skill of the local blacksmith. It is a sad pity that this "thing of beauty" should have to be pulled down and be replaced by a modern building which is not always creditable to the architectural taste of the age. A law should be passed that no old town halls should be pulled down, and that all new ones should be erected on a different site. No more fitting place could be found for the storage of the antiquities of the town, the relics of its old municipal life, sketches of its old buildings that have vanished, and portraits of its worthies, than the ancient building which has for so long kept watch and ward over its destinies and been the scene of most of the chief events connected with its history.

Happily several have been spared, and they speak to us of the old methods of municipal government; of the merchant guilds, composed of rich merchants and clothiers, who met therein to transact their common business. The guild hall was the centre of the trade of the town and of its social and commercial life. An amazing amount of business was transacted therein. If you study the records of any ancient borough you will discover that the pulse of life beat fast in the old guild hall. There the merchants met to talk over their affairs and "drink their guild." There the Mayor came with the Recorder or "Stiward" to hold his courts and to issue all "processes as attachementes, summons, distresses, precepts, warantes, subsideas, recognissaunces, etc." The guild hall was like a living thing. It held property, had a treasury, received the payments of freemen, levied fines on "foreigners" who were "not of the guild," administered justice, settled quarrels between the brethren of the guild, made loans to merchants, heard the complaints of the aggrieved, held feasts, promoted loyalty to the sovereign, and insisted strongly on every burgess that he should do his best to promote the "comyn weele and prophite of ye saide gylde." It required loyalty and secrecy from the members of the common council assembled within its walls, and no one was allowed to disclose to the public its decisions and decrees. This guild hall was a living thing. Like the Brook it sang:--

"Men may come and men may go, But I flow on for ever."

Mayor succeeded mayor, and burgess followed burgess, but the old guild hall lived on, the central mainspring of the borough's life. Therein were stored the archives of the town, the charters won, bargained for, and granted by kings and queens, which gave them privileges of trade, authority to hold fairs and markets, liberty to convey and sell their goods in other towns. Therein were preserved the civic plate, the maces that gave dignity to their proceedings, the cups bestowed by royal or noble personages or by the affluent members of the guild in token of their affection for their town and fellowship. Therein they assembled to don their robes to march in procession to the town church to hear Mass, or in later times a sermon, and then refreshed themselves with a feast at the charge of the hall. The portraits of the worthies of the town, of royal and distinguished patrons, adorned the walls, and the old guild hall preached daily lessons to the townsfolk to uphold the dignity and promote the welfare of the borough, and good feeling and the sense of brotherhood among themselves.

We give an illustration of the town hall of Shrewsbury, a notable building and well worthy of study as a specimen of a municipal building erected at the close of the sixteenth century. The style is that of the Renaissance with the usual mixture of debased Gothic and classic details, but the general effect is imposing; the arches and parapet are especially characteristic. An inscription over the arch at the north end records:--

"The xv^{th} day of June was this building begonne, William Jones and Thomas Charlton, Gent, then Bailiffes, and was erected and covered in their time, 1595."

A full description of this building is given in Canon Auden's history of the town. He states that "under the clock is the statue of Richard Duke of York, father of Edward IV, which was removed from the old Welsh Bridge at its demolition in 1791. This is flanked by an inscription recording this fact on the one side, and on the other by the three leopards' heads which are the arms of the town. On the other end of the building is a sun-dial, and also a sculptured angel holding a shield on which are the arms of England and France. This was removed from the gate of the town, which stood at the foot of the castle, on its demolition in 1825. The principal entrance is on the west, and over this are the arms of Queen Elizabeth and the date 1596. It will be noticed that one of the supporters is not the unicorn, but the red dragon of Wales. The interior is now partly devoted to various municipal offices, and partly used as the Mayor's Court, the roof of which still retains its old character." It was formerly known as the Old Market Hall, but the business of the market has been transferred to the huge but tasteless building of brick erected at the top of Mardol in 1869, the erection of which caused the destruction of several picturesque old houses which can ill be spared.

Cirencester possesses a magnificent town hall, a stately Perpendicular building, which stands out well against the noble church tower of the same period. It has a gateway flanked by buttresses and arcades on each side and two upper storeys with pierced battlements at the top which are adorned with richly floriated pinnacles. A great charm of the building are the three oriel windows extending from the top of the ground-floor division to the foot of the battlements. The surface of the wall of the façade is cut into panels, and niches for statues adorn the faces of the four buttresses. The whole forms a most elaborate piece of Perpendicular work of unusual character. We understand that it needs repair and is in some danger. The aid of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings has been called in, and their report has been sent to the civic authorities, who will, we hope, adopt their recommendations and deal kindly and tenderly with this most interesting structure.

Another famous guild hall is in danger, that at Norwich. It has even been suggested that it should be pulled down and a new one erected, but happily this wild scheme has been abandoned. Old buildings like not new inventions, just as old people fear to cross the road lest they should be run over by a motor-car. Norwich Guildhall does not approve of electric tram-cars, which run close to its north side and cause its old bones to vibrate in a most uncomfortable fashion. You can perceive how much it objects to these horrid cars by feeling the vibration of the walls when you are standing on the level of the street or on the parapet. You will not therefore be surprised to find ominous cracks in the old walls, and the roof is none too safe, the large span having tried severely the strength of the old oak beams. It is a very ancient building, the crypt under the east end, vaulted in brickwork, probably dating from the thirteenth century, while the main building was erected in the fifteenth century. The walls are well built, three feet in thickness, and constructed of uncut flints; the east end is enriched with diaper-work in chequers of stone and knapped flint. Some new buildings have been added on the south side within the last century. There is a clock turret at the east end, erected in 1850 at the cost of the then Mayor. Evidently the roof was giving the citizens anxiety at that time, as the good donor presented the clock tower on condition that the roof of the council chamber should be repaired. This famous old building has witnessed many strange scenes, such as the burning of old dames who were supposed to be witches, the execution of criminals and conspirators, the savage conflicts of citizens and soldiers in days of rioting and unrest. These good citizens of Norwich used to add considerably to the excitement of the place by their turbulence and eagerness for fighting. The crypt of the Town Hall is just old enough to have heard of the burning of the cathedral and monastery by the citizens in 1272, and to have seen the ringleaders executed. Often was there fighting in the city, and this same old building witnessed in 1549 a great riot, chiefly directed against the religious reforms and change of worship introduced by the first Prayer Book of Edward VI. It was rather amusing to see Parker, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, addressing the rioters from a platform, under which stood the spearmen of Kett, the leader of the riot, who took delight in pricking the feet of the orator with their spears as he poured forth his impassioned eloquence. In an important city like Norwich the guild hall has played an important part in the making of England, and is worthy in its old age of the tenderest and most reverent treatment, and even of the removal from its proximity of the objectionable electric tram-cars.

As we are at Norwich it would be well to visit another old house, which though not a municipal building, is a unique specimen of the domestic architecture of a Norwich citizen in days when, as Dr. Jessop remarks, "there was no coal to burn in the grate, no gas to enlighten the darkness of the night, no potatoes to eat, no tea to drink, and when men believed that the sun moved round the earth once in 365 days, and would have been ready to burn the culprit who should dare to maintain the contrary." It is called Strangers' Hall, a most interesting medieval mansion which had never ceased to be an inhabited house for at least 500 years, till it was purchased in 1899 by Mr. Leonard Bolingbroke, who rescued it from decay, and permits the public to inspect its beauties. The crypt and cellars, and possibly the kitchen and buttery, were portions of the original house owned in 1358 by Robert Herdegrey, Burgess in Parliament and Bailiff of the City, and the present hall, with its groined porch and oriel window, was erected later over the original fourteenth-century cellars. It was inhabited by a succession of merchants and chief men of Norwich, and at the beginning of the sixteenth century passed into the family of Sotherton. The merchant's mark of Nicholas Sotherton is painted on the roof of the hall. You can see this fine hall with its screen and gallery and beautifully-carved woodwork. The present Jacobean staircase and gallery, big oak window, and doorways leading into the garden are later additions made by Francis Cook, grocer of Norwich, who was mayor of the city in 1627. The house probably took its name from the family of Le Strange, who settled in Norwich in the sixteenth century. In 1610 the Sothertons conveyed the property to Sir le Strange Mordant, who sold it to the above-mentioned Francis Cook. Sir Joseph Paine came into possession just before the Restoration, and we see his initials, with those of his wife Emma, and the date 1659, in the spandrels of the fire-places in some of the rooms. This beautiful memorial of the merchant princes of Norwich, like many other old houses, fell into decay. It is most pleasant to find that it has now fallen into such tender hands, that its old timbers have been saved and preserved by the generous care of its present owner, who has thus earned the gratitude of all who love antiquity.

Sometimes buildings erected for quite different purposes have been used as guild halls. There was one at Reading, a guild hall near the holy brook in which the women washed their clothes, and made so much noise by "beating their battledores" (the usual style of washing in those days) that the mayor and his worthy brethren were often disturbed in their deliberations, so they petitioned the King to grant them the use of the deserted church of the Greyfriars' Monastery lately dissolved in the town. This request was granted, and in the place where the friars sang their services and preached, the mayor and burgesses "drank their guild" and held their banquets. When they got tired of that building they filched part of the old grammar school from the boys, making an upper storey, wherein they held their council meetings. The old church then was turned into a prison, but now happily it is a church again. At last the corporation had a town hall of their own, which they decorated with the initials S.P.Q.R., Romanus and Readingensis conveniently beginning with the same letter. Now they have a grand new town hall, which provides every accommodation for this growing town.

The Newbury town hall, a Georgian structure, has just been demolished. It was erected in 1740-1742, taking the place of an ancient and interesting guild hall built in 1611 in the centre of the market-place. The councillors were startled one day by the collapse of the ceiling of the hall, and when we last saw the chamber tons of heavy plaster were lying on the floor. The roof was unsound; the adjoining street too narrow for the hundred motors that raced past the dangerous corners in twenty minutes on the day of the Newbury races; so there was no help for the old building; its fate was sealed, and it was bound to come down. But the town possesses a very charming Cloth Hall, which tells of the palmy days of the Newbury cloth-makers, or clothiers, as they were called; of Jack of Newbury, the famous John Winchcombe, or Smallwoode, whose story is told in Deloney's humorous old black-letter pamphlet, entitled _The Most Pleasant and Delectable Historie of John Winchcombe, otherwise called Jacke of Newberie_, published in 1596. He is said to have furnished one hundred men fully equipped for the King's service at Flodden Field, and mightily pleased Queen Catherine, who gave him a "riche chain of gold," and wished that God would give the King many such clothiers. You can see part of the house of this worthy, who died in 1519. Fuller stated in the seventeenth century that this brick and timber residence had been converted into sixteen clothiers' houses. It is now partly occupied by the Jack of Newbury Inn. A fifteenth-century gable with an oriel window and carved barge-board still remains, and you can see a massive stone chimney-piece in one of the original chambers where Jack used to sit and receive his friends. Some carvings also have been discovered in an old house showing what is thought to be a carved portrait of the clothier. It bears the initials J.W., and another panel has a raised shield suspended by strap and buckle with a monogram I.S., presumably John Smallwoode. He was married twice, and the portrait busts on each side are supposed to represent his two wives. Another carving represents the Blessed Trinity under the figure of a single head with three faces within a wreath of oak-leaves with floriated spandrels.[44] We should like to pursue the subject of these Newbury clothiers and see Thomas Dolman's house, which is so fine and large and cost so much money that his workpeople used to sing a doggerel ditty:--

Lord have mercy upon us miserable sinners, Thomas Dolman has built a new house and turned away all his spinners.

[44] _History of Newbury_, by Walter Money, F.S.A.

The old Cloth Hall which has led to this digression has been recently restored, and is now a museum.

The ancient town of Wallingford, famous for its castle, had a guild hall with selds under it, the earliest mention of which dates back to the reign of Edward II, and occurs constantly as the place wherein the burghmotes were held. The present town hall was erected in 1670--a picturesque building on stone pillars. This open space beneath the town hall was formerly used as a corn-market, and so continued until the present corn-exchange was erected half a century ago. The slated roof is gracefully curved, is crowned by a good vane, and a neat dormer window juts out on the side facing the market-place. Below this is a large Renaissance window opening on to a balcony whence orators can address the crowds assembled in the market-place at election times. The walls of the hall are hung with portraits of the worthies and benefactors of the town, including one of Archbishop Laud. A mayor's feast was, before the passing of the Municipal Corporations Act, a great occasion in most of our boroughs, the expenses of which were defrayed by the rates. The upper chamber in the Wallingford town hall was formerly a kitchen, with a huge fire-place, where mighty joints and fat capons were roasted for the banquet. Outside you can see a ring of light-coloured stones, called the bull-ring, where bulls, provided at the cost of the Corporation, were baited. Until 1840 our Berkshire town of Wokingham was famous for its annual bull-baiting on St. Thomas's Day. A good man, one George Staverton, was once gored by a bull; so he vented his rage upon the whole bovine race, and left a charity for the providing of bulls to be baited on the festival of this saint, the meat afterwards to be given to the poor of the town. The meat is still distributed, but the bulls are no longer baited. Here at Wokingham there was a picturesque old town hall with an open undercroft, supported on pillars; but the townsfolk must needs pull it down and erect an unsightly brick building in its stead. It contains some interesting portraits of royal and distinguished folk dating from the time of Charles I, but how the town became possessed of these paintings no man knoweth.

Another of our Berkshire towns can boast of a fine town hall that has not been pulled down like so many of its fellows. It is not so old as some, but is in itself a memorial of some vandalism, as it occupies the site of the old Market Cross, a thing of rare beauty, beautifully carved and erected in Mary's reign, but ruthlessly destroyed by Waller and his troopers during the Civil War period. Upon the ground on which it stood thirty-four years later--in 1677--the Abingdon folk reared their fine town hall; its style resembles that of Inigo Jones, and it has an open undercroft--a kindly shelter from the weather for market women. Tall and graceful it dominates the market-place, and it is crowned with a pretty cupola and a fine vane. You can find a still more interesting hall in the town, part of the old abbey, the gateway with its adjoining rooms, now used as the County Hall, and there you will see as fine a collection of plate and as choice an array of royal portraits as ever fell to the lot of a provincial county town. One of these is a Gainsborough. One of the reasons why Abingdon has such a good store of silver plate is that according to their charter the Corporation has to pay a small sum yearly to their High Stewards, and these gentlemen--the Bowyers of Radley and the Earls of Abingdon--have been accustomed to restore their fees to the town in the shape of a gift of plate.

We might proceed to examine many other of these interesting buildings, but a volume would be needed for the purpose of recording them all. Too many of the ancient ones have disappeared and their places taken by modern, unsightly, though more convenient buildings. We may mention the salvage of the old market-house at Winster, in Derbyshire, which has been rescued by that admirable National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty, which descends like an angel of mercy on many a threatened and abandoned building and preserves it for future generations. The Winster market-house is of great age; the lower part is doubtless as old as the thirteenth century, and the upper part was added in the seventeenth. Winster was at one time an important place; its markets were famous, and this building must for very many years have been the centre of the commercial life of a large district. But as the market has diminished in importance, the old market-house has fallen out of repair, and its condition has caused anxiety to antiquaries for some time past. Local help has been forthcoming under the auspices of the National Trust, in which it is now vested for future preservation.

Though not a town hall, we may here record the saving of a very interesting old building, the Palace Gatehouse at Maidstone, the entire demolition of which was proposed. It is part of the old residence of the Archbishops of Canterbury, near the Perpendicular church of All Saints, on the banks of the Medway, whose house at Maidstone added dignity to the town and helped to make it the important place it was. The Palace was originally the residence of the Rector of Maidstone, but was given up in the thirteenth century to the Archbishop. The oldest part of the existing building is at the north end, where some fifteenth-century windows remain. Some of the rooms have good old panelling and open stone fire-places of the fifteenth-century date. But decay has fallen on the old building. Ivy is allowed to grow over it unchecked, its main stems clinging to the walls and disturbing the stones. Wet has begun to soak into the walls through the decayed stone sills. Happily the gatehouse has been saved, and we doubt not that the enlightened Town Council will do its best to preserve this interesting building from further decay.

The finest Early Renaissance municipal building is the picturesque guild hall at Exeter, with its richly ornamented front projecting over the pavement and carried on arches. The market-house at Rothwell is a beautifully designed building erected by Sir Thomas Tresham in 1577. Being a Recusant, he was much persecuted for his religion, and never succeeded in finishing the work. We give an illustration of the quaint little market-house at Wymondham, with its open space beneath, and the upper storey supported by stout posts and brackets. It is entirely built of timber and plaster. Stout posts support the upper floor, beneath which is a covered market. The upper chamber is reached by a quaint rude wooden staircase. Chipping Campden can boast of a handsome oblong market-house, built of stone, having five arches with three gables on the long sides, and two arches with gables over each on the short sides. There are mullioned windows under each gable.

The city of Salisbury could at one time boast of several halls of the old guilds which flourished there. There was a charming island of old houses near the cattle-market, which have all disappeared. They were most picturesque and interesting buildings, and we regret to have to record that new half-timbered structures have been erected in their place with sham beams, and boards nailed on to the walls to represent beams, one of the monstrosities of modern architectural art. The old Joiners' Hall has happily been saved by the National Trust. It has a very attractive sixteenth-century façade, though the interior has been much altered. Until the early years of the nineteenth century it was the hall of the guild or company of the joiners of the city of New Sarum.

Such are some of the old municipal buildings of England. There are many others which might have been mentioned. It is a sad pity that so many have disappeared and been replaced by modern and uninteresting structures. If a new town hall be required in order to keep pace with the increasing dignity of an important borough, the Corporation can at least preserve their ancient municipal hall which has so long watched over the fortunes of the town and shared in its joys and sorrows, and seek a fresh site for their new home without destroying the old.