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Alnwick

Alnwick Town Hall

Last Updated:

12 Mar 2025

Alnwick

This is a

Town Hall, Civic Building

55.413386, -1.707638

Founded in 

1731

Current status is

Extant

Designer (if known):

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Listed Grade II

Alnwick’s 18th-century Town Hall remains a survivor despite several relocations of the council chambers, fitting in nicely with the North East’s countless striking civic buildings.

It was originally built on the site of a toll house (occupying an earlier brewhouse) when the market was a stopping point on the Great North Road. We’ve talked extensively about all the coaching inns, but it’s no coincidence so many ended up on Fenkle Street. Folk could wake up, pay their toll at the booth, grab their horse, and make their way to Berwick or Morpeth. It was in rough condition, so the town’s municipal elite decided to construct a town hall in its place.

It was here where the common council, quarter sessions, and the court took place. The central hall on the first floor acted as the courtroom, with the jury room on the south side. If charged, folk would be taken over to the Town Gaol under the 15th-century Bondgate Tower, which later moved to the Green Bat.
The main two floors of this building were constructed in 1731, featuring your typical Georgian neoclassical design. A new clock and tower spires were added slightly later, by a Mr Bell and George Hastings respectively, in the late 1760s. The former clock was taken over to the Pottergate Tower.

The Urban District Council continued to use the Town Hall until more modern facilities were made available at the town workhouse on Waggonway Road after WWII. This place is still used as an art gallery and for markets.

Listing Description (if available)

MARKET PLACE 1. 5330 (West Side) Town Hall (formerly listed under Fenkle Street) NU 1813 SE 1/50 20.2.52. I GV 2. 1731; clock tower by Mr Bell 1767 and corner spires of tower by Mr George Hastings 1771. Two storeys and 5 bays. Ashlar with rusticated quoins. Band course to high parapet. Steps to boxed porch on 1st floor to right. Hipped slate roof with clock tower behind ridge. Larger glazing bar sash windows on 1st floor with moulded architraves. Small glazing bar sash windows on ground floor. C20 shop front with recessed doorway to left. Boldly rusticated central archway to throughpassage. Memorial tablet over central 1st floor window reads: "This Town House of the Burgesses of Alnwick rebuilt in the year of Our Lord 1731 by Edward Grey, Richard Grieve, William Forster, Robert Claxton: Chamberlains." To the left is a lead rainwater pipe head with fluted cap, the box has a St Michael and Dragon on 3 faces and also the names Stother, Forster, Gibson, Hardy and the date 1790 (possibly for roof repairs), The Fenkle Street front breaks forward slightly to the tower bay of 3 stages; a band course above each stage and an open pediment and parapet above to each side; it is capped by a small pointed cupola with a weathervane and corner pinnacles. A clock on each face with louvred openings below (original clock removed to Pottergate Tower qv 1772). A round headed window at the top of the 3rd stage and a smaller one at the base of the 2nd stage with raised surrounds, Boldly rusticated throughpassage archway at the base. Two glazing bar sash windows on each side of the tower with moulded architraves; doorway to right with raised surround; similar doorway to left now a window.

Both of these maps illustrate Alnwick's centre from the middle to the end of the 19th century. The earlier map provides us a detailed understanding of the Town Hall's innards, with a court room and jury room filling much of the first floor alongside the clock tower. Note the incorrect spelling on the Shakespeare's Tavern! Also there's a few of Alnwick's lost pubs on show like the Star and the Nags Head. Also worthy of note is the burgage plots which are still explicit, with gardens then filled by extra development and trades.

Parts of Fenkle Street and much of the west of Alnwick's town centre was starting to be redeveloped, making way for modern infrastructure needed to keep a large town like this going. The Star Inn was cleared for the new Post Office (now the Penny Black) and many of the historic yards and public houses along Clayport were cleared for the Bird & Bush and eventually the Bus Station & supermarket.

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Alnwick Town Hall in February 2025

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Fenkle Street in the 1890s, unknown photographer.

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The Town Hall and the medieval street layout clearly illustrated. Look at all the old burgage plots by then redeveloped.

Historic England Archive (RAF photography) raf_540_a_412_sffo_0035 flown 6 May 1949

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