Nottingham Civic Society - T.C. Hine and the Town Hall Question

Few people in Nottingham in the mid nineteenth century were more convinced
of the need for the town to commission a new town hall, if only as a matter
of self respect, than the architect Thomas Chambers Hine (1813-99). Hine
would have been well aware of the emerging northern towns that erected their
prestigious town halls in the period 1850-75; these included Leeds (1853-8),
Halifax (1859-62), Manchester (1867-77) and Bradford (1870-3).

Hine lived to see the building of the Guildhall (1887-8), which housed courts
and headquarters for the Police and Fire Brigade. However, the Victorian town
hall he so wanted was destined to be Cecil Howitt’s neo-Baroque offering of
the 1920s that was not completed until 1929, thirty years after Hine’s death.

In the piece that follows Hine starts to make known his feelings on the subject. Tuesday 10 July 1855 was one of the great days in the life of Thomas
Chambers Hine. On this day his Adams and Page lace warehouse was formally
opened with great ceremony. With a frontage of 144 feet on Stoney Street and
an overall depth of 100 feet towards St. Mary’s Gate, this truly was a great
building.

The opening was extensively covered in both the Nottingham Review and the
Nottingham Journal; in the Review most of the speeches were printed verbatim.
Hine expressed his relief at the completion of the work. “In the building of
which we have this day met to celebrate the opening, and of which I have had
the honour to be concerned as the architect, I have taken a very great interest, and for the last two and a half years it has occupied no inconsiderable share of my time and attention.”

After referring briefly to the twelve warehouses he had erected in the town
since 1851, Hine returned to his latest triumph. “The external appearance of
the building has, as I fully expected it would, excited a considerable degree
of criticism; but I am not willing to admit the force of those objections which
are made to it on the ground of too much ornament being imparted to it. It has
been said by some that it assumes too much importance for a lace warehouse,
and that it might be taken more for a town hall or an exchange.”

Warming to his theme Hine quickly went on the attack. “Is it not notorious that the public edifi ces of Nottingham are very much behind the age, and that they are inferior to those of nearly every other town of the same size in the kingdom Let us, for instance, examine our Town Hall(1) and Exchange as buildings of this nature are referred to, and what shall we find? Of the former perhaps we need not say anything, as from the discussion it has given rise to, I am inclined to think it is already doomed; therefore, we will not abuse it in its old age. Let me ask of the latter, is it a building, which shows the commercial importance of a town like Nottingham? Standing as it does on perhaps the fi nest site, I was going to say in Europe, but certainly in England, I consider it a disgrace to us.”

After dismissing in some detail the features of the façade of the Exchange, the architect reverted to his main theme. “I ask you gentlemen, if these are our public buildings may not the public, who are accustomed to regard them as
such, be so habituated to inferior works, as to be unable to distinguish when a
building is consistent with the purpose for which it is erected. I think you will
gather from what I have said that my object has been to raise an edifi ce which
shall be worthy of the town, of the important trade for which it is celebrated, and last, though not least, of the energetic and enterprising gentlemen of this firm.”

Hine was subsequently challenged by the Town Improvement Committee to
produce designs for the “Improvement of Nottingham Market Place”. By 1857
he provided the Committee with a large drawing showing a new town hall
somewhat in the manner of a large French chateau. In front was a market place
with its central area lowered, thus allowing arcades to be set underneath the
surrounding roadways. A fountain was at the centre and balustrade parapets
and sweeping steps were at the edges. The original drawing survives and is
stored at Brewhouse Yard.

Hine recalled later: “shortly afterwards the question of new municipal
buildings began to be discussed, and in the same friendly spirit as before I
was requested by the then Improvement Committee to furnish plans for these
buildings, in other words, to give them a design for a back to the Exchange
front as exhibited in the design which I had the honour of submitting to the
Corporation in the fi rst instance, and I believe that the plans for these buildings will be found somewhere in the Public Offi ces.” Nevertheless there was no action on the part of the Council then and for some time ahead.

Writing later in his eclectic compendium of Nottingham history Nottingham
Its Castle, A Military Fortress, A Royal Palace, A Ducal Mansion, A Blackened
Ruin, a Museum and Gallery of Art, published in 1876, Hine was more specific
about the Exchange.

“In 1724, the Exchange, in the Market Place, was erected from the designs
of Mr Marmaduke Pennel, the Mayor. This edifice, though of modest red
brick exterior, had the merit of being real and good of its kind, and with its
colonnaded piazza, its statue niches(2), and other stone accessories, would at
any rate bear the impress of a public building. Simple as was its design, it was
however found to be too much in advance of the age when “George the Third
was King” to be appreciated; for towards the middle of that monarch’s reign
[1815] it had to give way to the bald stuccoed shop windowed façade, which
it now presents.(3)

“One conspicuous feature in the old Exchange was the wide piazza before
named, and it is this colonnaded ambulatory noticed so frequently by old
writers which distinguished our Market Place from all others.”

The lack of a “modern” Town Hall in Nottingham and the reluctance of
the Council to even contemplate doing something to rectify the situation
was a constant source of irritation for Hine. Not until 7 April 1873 was a
committee was appointed “to enquire into the propriety of the Council taking
steps for the erection of suitable buildings for the public requirements of the
Borough.” Then early in 1875 Hine’s friend the Borough Engineer, Marriott
Ogle Tarbotton, who had been exploring possible sites for a new town hall,
presented the results of his work in a report to the Public Buildings Committee
of the Corporation of Nottingham.

Ken Brand
April 2004

Find out more in two Civic Society publications:
The Council House, Nottingham and the Old Market Sqaure
by John Beckett and Ken Brand, colour photographs by Martine Hamilton Knight.
Thomas Chambers Hine: architect of Victorian Nottingham by Ken Brand

(Tarbotton’s suggestions and the sequence of events leading to the erection of
the Guildhall in Burton Street will be recounted in a future Newsletter)
Notes:
1. No doubt Hine was aware that on 18 November 1850 the Council
appointed a committee to consider “the Cost of providing another
place for public business in case the Council should deem it expedient
to sell the Town Hall.” Then on 2 May 1853 a committee was
appointed “consider the Eligibility of and the best plan for enlarging
the Council Chamber.” An amendment to consider a new Guildhall
was not carried. The Town Hall and the Guildhall mentioned refer to
the same building at Weekday Cross. The Council Chamber was there
and continued in use there until, through the Borough Extension Act
of 1877, the number of councillors was increased (from 56 to 64) and
an enlarged chamber was needed.
2. The niches were intended for the statues of George I and the Prince
and Princess of Wales but were left “untenanted.”
3. Of this alteration Hine noted pointedly:“AD 1815 The Exchange front
in the Market Place remodelled – the combined effort of two Archts.,
Adams and Whyatt!”(sic).

Cecil Howitt’s Council House celebrates its 75th birthday this year – 2004.

T.C. HINE and the TOWN HALL QUESTION