When a booming Leicester had outgrown its Guildhall

BANK HOLIDAY FESTIVITIES COINCIDED WITH OPENING OF TOWN HALL IN AUGUST, 1876

LEICESTER was still using the medieval Guildhall as its town hall right up until the mid-19th century. By the 1870s, however, it was no longer adequate to support a rapidly growing industrial town.

The old cattle market site was choabout sen for a new town hall and a competition held to design it.

Leicester-born architect Frances J Hames won the commission with his modern Queen Anne-style design. The new town hall housed the council offices and council chamber, law courts, sanitary department, school board and 30 lamplighters.

The borough police moved into the basement (where there were 13 cells) and the fire brigade had a station behind the building.

The opening ceremony was performed on August 7, 1876 by the

Mayor, Alderman William Barfoot, beginning with the borough magistrates and members of the council “taking a regretful leave of their ancient and time-honoured place of meeting at the Guildhall”.

The proceedings were followed by a banquet at the Corn Exchange for

400 of “the principal gentlemen connected with the borough and the county”.

It was a bank holiday, chosen to allow as many people as possible to attend the ceremony, and then enjoy the entertainment provided by bands on the racecourse and a

“grand display” of fireworks in the evening.

Look carefully and you can see it has been built on a sloping site with an extra storey levelling it up at the Horsefair Street end. The construction period is reflected in the different dates on the front gable (1875, the intended date of opening) and wrought iron gates at the main entrance (1876).

Frances J Hames also designed Town Hall Square with its fountain, the gift of Alderman Israel Hart, the first Jewish Mayor of Leicester and a pioneer manufacturer of readymade men’s suits. There is an almost identical fountain in Porto, Portugal.

Two war memorials were placed in the square in the early 20th century; one at the corner of Horsefair Street commemorating those who served in the South African War of 1899-1902, and the other a temporary memorial to the dead of the First World War that later became the permanent Arch of Remembrance in Victoria Park.

More than just an ornamental space, Town Hall Square has seen many public gatherings, from the proclamation of monarchs to parades of mourning on their death, commemorations of war and armistice, celebrations of sporting victories and political demonstrations.

Words and pictures courtesy of Leicester City Council’s The Story of Leicester

‘PRINCIPAL GENTLEMEN’: Above, the Leicester Town Hall opening ceremony on August 7, 1876; from left, Town Hall Square circa 1870, when it was a cattle market; the town hall under construction in 1876; the Town Hall Square’s fountain was the gift of Alderman Israel Hart, painted by Arthur Stockdale Cope in 1896

PUBLIC SPACE: Above, Town Hall Square in the 1920s, showing the temporary war memorial; below, from left, Lord Mayor Walter John Lovell and Councillor Jonathan North addressing a large crowd at the end of the Great War; the town hall in May, 1976; and the Queen meeting crowds in Town Hall Square in 1980