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Municipal building in Egremont, Cumbria, England From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Egremont Town Hall is a municipal building in Main Street, Egremont, Cumbria, England. The town hall, which is currently used as a public library, is a Grade II listed building.[1]
Egremont Town Hall | |
---|---|
Location | Main Street, Egremont |
Coordinates | 54.4836°N 3.5285°W |
Built | 1890 |
Architectural style(s) | Gothic Revival style |
Listed Building – Grade II | |
Official name | Town Hall, Main Street |
Designated | 9 August 1984 |
Reference no. | 1086707 |
Following significant growth in the population, largely associated with the expansion of open-pit iron mining in the area,[2] Egremont became a local government district with its own local board of health in 1879.[3] In this context, the local board decided to commission a new market hall: the site they chose for the market hall was open land to the west of Main Street.[4] The market hall was completed in 1883 and the local board followed this up, a few years later, with the procurement of a town hall on a site to the east of the market hall.[5]
The new town hall was designed in the Gothic Revival style, built in fine sandstone at a cost of £5,000 and was completed in 1890.[6] The design involved an asymmetrical main frontage with five bays facing onto Main Street; the central bay was formed by a five-stage clock tower with a doorway with a fanlight in the first stage, a segmental window in the second stage, a segmental niche in the third stage, a belfry in the fourth stage and a series of clock faces in the fifth stage: the tower was surmounted by a pyramid-shaped roof. The two outer bays on the left were surmounted with a gable, as were the two outer bays on the right: the outer bays were fenestrated by pointed windows on the ground floor and segmental windows on the first floor. Internally, the principal room was the office for the local board.[3]
After the area became an urban district, with the town hall as its headquarters, in 1894,[7] the new council designated some rooms for teaching and a new school was established in the building in 1895.[8] The town hall ceased to be the local seat of government when the enlarged Ennerdale Rural District Council was formed at Cleator Moor in 1934.[7][9] It was subsequently used as a venue for community events including theatre and cinema performances.[10]
The declining use of the building caused Copeland District Council to market the building for sale in 2010.[11] However, there was limited interest from purchasers and the building was withdrawn from sale, so that the local public library could relocate to the town hall later that year.[12][13]
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