Kentish Gazette Canterbury & District
Man behind city’s beautiful buildings
How a teenage cabinet maker from Hampshire went on to change the face of Canterbury...
The stunning buildings now home to Lloyds and Santander, the Roman Catholic Church in Burgate and the former Congregational church in Guildhall Street which became part of Debenhams are all the works of one man - John Green Hall.
Aged 31, the aspiring architect from Hampshire - who as a teenager started out as a cabinet maker - was one of 30 other hopefuls interviewed for the post of Canterbury surveyor. He spent the next two decades making his mark on the street scene - as well as sorting out the city’s sewage system.
Hall lived a few doors down from his office at 4 St Margaret’s Street, which he designed with large upper windows for maximum light. He certainly had the vision to craft some of Canterbury’s most famous buildings. Hall is responsible for the city cemetery chapels (1877), the Masonic Temple in St Peter’s Street (1880) and the property housing Natwest (1885). The Presbyterian church erected near Canterbury East railway station in 1881 was also his work. Today, all that remains in one gatepost as the church was demolished to make way for the city’s ring-road.
Hall, who clearly had a great fondness for spires and pinnacles, used a range of materials such as bath stone, rag stone and brick.
He died an early death aged 53 in London. His remains were brought back to Canterbury cemetery, where in May 1887 he was buried close to the cemetery chapel he had designed just a decade before.
■ Information and pictures used with kind permission of Canterbury Historical and Archaeological Society.