Alnwick
Alnwick Town Hall
Last Updated:
12 Mar 2025
Alnwick
This is a
Town Hall, Civic Building
55.413386, -1.707638
Founded in
Current status is
Extant
Designer (if known):
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)
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.
Alnwick Town Hall in February 2025
Fenkle Street in the 1890s, unknown photographer.
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