Heart of the Community
Berkhamsted Town Hall has offered a venue for educating Victorian workers, feeding wartime evacuees and marrying the town’s citizens. Once derelict, it is now a thriving community hub once more…
Berkhamsted Town Hall is one of the most recognisable buildings on the High Street, but what is its history, and how did such an outstanding building come to be built in the town?
Before the Town Hall was built, the site belonged to a firm of London carriers, with stables and apartments above, and was also home to a barn, washhouse and brewhouse.
When the Tudor market hall further east along the High Street burned down, the current building was commissioned to replace it, along with the 16th century town hall – the Court House – which still stands in Church Lane.
Lady Marian Alford, the widow of Lord Alford, who lived at Ashridge House, was very involved in the plans to build the new town hall. Funding for the plans came from a substantial contribution made by her son, John Egerton-Cust, 2nd Earl of Brownlow, as well as public donations.
Lamb was no conformist, and had been labelled a ‘Rogue Gothic Revivalist’, whose designs were blasted for breaking with convention.
His design included an octagonal turret and a spire on the left, three two-light windows with a gable above in the centre, and a threelight serpentine-shaped oriel window. The clock on the outside was added in memory of Thomas Read, a former town surveyor, in 1897.
The building was completed in 1859, minus Lamb’s suggested leaded glass in the windows of the rooms overlooking the High Street. At that time it was known as the Market House and Town Hall. It was not without controversy, though – a year later, an anonymous author published a pamphlet criticising the new building, because it was so far away from the original site of the original Tudor Market House.
While the market hall occupied the ground floor, the first floor included rooms for the Mechanics’ Institute as well as a large assembly hall. Mechanics’ institutes were created to offer adult education to working men, and often funded by local industrialists who believed they would benefit from having more knowledgeable and skilled employees, and to provide a more wholesome pastime than gambling and drinking in pubs!
Local leather-seller Henry Nash was largely responsible for initiating the Berkhamsted Mechanics Institute. Early meetings were held in the living room above his shop in Castle Street and moved to the Town Hall once it was built, offering both a library and reading room. And there it stayed for more than a century, until it was outdated by public libraries, affordable (to the masses) books, newspapers and eventually TV.
Berkhamsted Parish Council met in the Town Hall until 1898, and it was also used as a magistrates court until 1938 when Berkhamsted Civic Centre was built.
It had another interesting use in World War II, when the Assembly Hall became a British Restaurant. These were communal kitchens created in 1940 to help those in need, whether they had run out of ration coupons, been bombed out of their homes, or were otherwise in need of help. The increase in the population in Berkhamsted, many of whom had been evacuated out of London, pushed the need for the initiative in the town.
The Assembly Hall was renamed the Wellcome Great Hall in 1992 in recognition of a substantial donation from The Wellcome Foundation, and is now used for wedding receptions, as well as dinners, dances, parties, concerts and more.
The Town Hall eventually became derelict in the 1970s. It had been closed due to fire safety concerns and because it no longer raised enough income to maintain it. There was a plan to build a new hall behind it, but that was thwarted by legal issues and a block on local authority spending. Meanwhile the building fell into disrepair and sadly became a target for vandals. The council tried to sell the building, but a group of objectors – the Rescue and Action Group – came to its aid! The group included three 16-year-old boys from Ashlyns School, who gained support from Berkhamsted personalities: such as author Graham Greene, author and broadcaster Richard Mabey, and composer Antony Hopkins. Their efforts saw a new Trust formed in 1979, which restored the Town Hall to full use from 1982-1999.
Today, Berkhamsted Town Hall offers three versatile rooms, with capacities of up to 200 people, for wedding and civil ceremonies, receptions, private parties and meetings. Activities on offer include a Community Market, Egyptian dance classes, Kumon Maths and English lessons, T’ai Chi and playgroups.
