History of the Town Hall
In 1800 the Town Hall moved from Sandside (on the site of the former Bethel Mission, now a café) to William Newstead’s Assembly Rooms on Long Room Street, as St Nicholas Street was then called. All Scarborough Corporation business was conducted here until 1867 when a new town hall and court house were opened in Castle Road. This building was eventually considered inadequate (it was demolished in 1971) and by 1898 the Corporation was seeking a site for a new town hall. In 1903 the building you are in today became our Town Hall. The building that originally stood on this site was 22 Long Room Street (renamed St Nicholas Street in 1844). The house was the home of John Woodall, a member of a prosperous and influential Scarborough family, whose connections with the town date back to the 17th century. One of the family businesses, Woodall’s Bank, stood on the corner of St Nicholas Street until it was acquired by Barclays Bank in 1896.
The first owner
A portrait of John Woodall is hanging in the Committee Room. In 1844, John Woodall had the house demolished and replaced by an impressive red-brick mansion named St Nicholas House. The building was designed by Henry Wyatt who displayed the design at the Royal Academy in 1852. The style of the house is Jacobean. There are two storeys and an attic, all in red brick with stone dressings, plinth, string courses, cornice and parapet. In 1898, John Woodall’s son, John W Woodall, whose portrait hangs in the entrance foyer, and who had inherited the property on the death of his father in 1879, offered St Nicholas House to the Corporation, who purchased the building for £33,575. The sale price included St Nicholas House, three properties on St Nicholas Street, Granby House (soon after demolished on the site of the sunken gardens), the St Nicholas under-cliff, the Exhibition Hall on the Foreshore Road (which, having survived as the old Olympia, was destroyed by fire in 1975), the adjacent Coastguard Station and the old reading room and library at the top of King’s Steps. In the same year work began on the new town hall at a total cost of £18,522
Royal visit
Harry W Smith, the recently appointed borough engineer and surveyor, designed the new eastern (seaward) wing in a similar style to the original, to accommodate the council chamber and other offices. Royalty graced the opening of the town hall on 28th July 1903. HRH Princess Beatrice (Princess Henry of Battenburg), youngest daughter of Queen Victoria, was met on her arrival at the railway station by the civic heads of Yorkshire and by the five year old Sacheverell Sitwell who presented flowers. The Princess formally opened the town hall and unveiled the bronze statue of her mother, Queen Victoria. The ceremonial key that was used to open the Town Hall is displayed in the cabinet in the corridor. Further alterations to the Town Hall were made in 1962-64 with extensions in King Street and St Nicholas Street.The statue of Queen Victoria in the Town Hall gardens is the only statue of a public figure to be found in Scarborough; it cost £600 in 1903. The Town Hall is a grade II listed building. The Civic Society restored the statue in 2018.
Enter the Town Hall
We enter the Town Hall at the main entrance on St Nicholas Street.The mosaic in the floor of the entrance foyer is the Common Seal of the Borough, which dates from the 13th century and was used as the armorial bearings of Scarborough until 1935. The Latin words surrounding the seal mean: ‘The Common Seal of the Burgesses of Scarborough’. Behind the stairwell are stained glass windows bearing the coats of arms of some of Yorkshire’s major cities and towns. From top left they are: Leeds, Bradford, Huddersfield, Hull, Wakefield, York, Sheffield and Harrogate. Civic representatives from these areas attended the official opening of the Town Hall in July 1903.The Cabinet Room and the Members’ Retiring Room, which are both off the entrance foyer, were respectively, the dining room and library of St Nicholas House. Both rooms contain the original fireplaces and overmantels. The one in the Members’ Room bears the date of the completion of St Nicholas House, 1845. In the entrance foyer is a decorative cast iron incense burner, one of the 100 placed on London Bridge for the wedding of Edward, Prince of Wales to Princess Alexandra of Denmark on 10th March1863.
The Civic Parlour
The Civic Parlour was the drawing room of the old house and the wall on the left was the end wall of the house. Here, on either side of the connecting door to the Mayor’s parlour, are paintings by H B Carter of the original house, which stood on the site and of St Nicholas House before it was converted into the Town Hall. Of note in this room, and in the Committee Room, are the fire surrounds, which are adorned with semi-precious stones, all collected from the beaches between Filey and Whitby. They are mostly Cornelian, Amethyst and Whitby Jet, with some opal types and crystal formations. Also displayed in the Civic Parlour are photographs of visits to the Borough by members of the Royal family and paintings by H B Carter and other artists.
The Mayoral Corridor
The items in the display cabinet in the corridor are clearly identified so descriptions here are unnecessary. There are, however, one or two items of particular interest including the key which was used to open the Town Hall officially in 1903, the miniature silver maces, the tops of which can be removed to reveal a small snuff container, dating from the days when the Mayor or his guests would regularly indulge in snuff-taking, a commemorative set of mason’s tools to mark the opening of the Marine Drive and a decanter presented to the Borough by Sir Michael Shaw when he retired as Scarborough’s Member of Parliament in 1992. Also of interest are the various types of freedom caskets. It will be seen that these have become much less ornate over the years.
Painting in Corridor
The large painting hanging in the corridor, ‘Scarborough Spa Promenade’ by Thomas Jones Barker, always attracts great interest when the story behind it is explained to visitors. The Prince and Princess of Wales and Lord Londesborough are prominent figures, depicted as visiting the Spa in 1870. For a fee, of up to 100 guineas, Oliver Sarony, the artist and photographer, took photographs of prominent people and passed them to Barker for incorporation in the picture. The higher the fee, the nearer your likeness would be to the royal couple. For their fee, their names were also recorded for posterity, as a key identifying everyone on the picture is displayed alongside it. The painting is fictitious, as the royal couple did not walk at the Spa in 1870, however it is believed they did visit Scarborough on other occasions. In his ‘Book of Scarbrough Spaw’ Sir Meredith Whittaker refers to the painting as a ‘gigantic fraud’.
The Borough Mace and Chains of Office
The Borough Mace and original chains of office are on display in the mayoral corridor cabinets and the chains are now only worn on special ceremonial occasions. Replica chains are now worn for most events and these will be worn by the Mayor for tours of the Town Hall. The mace was presented to Scarborough Corporation in 1636 by Sir Thomas Posthumous Hoby of Hackness Hall.The mace is the symbol of the authority of the Borough Council and must always be on display during a meeting of the Council. It is also carried in front of the Mayor on civic ceremonial occasions. The mace of the City of London is a replica of Scarborough’s mace, the original London mace having been destroyed in the Great Fire of London. The Mayor’s chain was presented to the Corporation in 1852 by John Woodall, who has been referred to earlier as the owner of St. Nicholas House. The Mayoress’ chain was presented to the Corporation in 1897 when a public subscription was held to purchase it to commemorate the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria that year. The date 1897 is included in the links of the chain. The Deputy Mayor’s chain was purchased by the Corporation in 1925.
The Committee Room
Note the fire surround which are adorned with semi-precious stones, all collected from the beaches between Filey and Whitby. A piece of shrapnel from the bombardment is displayed on the cabinet in this room. The painting hanging by the doorway ‘Remember Scarborough’, by Edith Kemp-Welch, was suggested by the bombardment of Scarborough. It was presented by Miss Kemp-Welch to the Mayor and Corporation on 13th December 1915 and was later reproduced as a recruiting poster. There are also portraits of John Woodall and John W Woodall hanging in this room.
The Council Chamber
The Council Chamber has some fine panelling created by a firm of local carpenters. The cypher ‘CR’ is prominent in the stained glass windows both here in the Council Chamber and outside in the corridor. This is the cypher of King Charles I, in whose reign the mace of the Borough was made. At the rear of the room, under the public gallery, is what is still referred to as the Robing Room, in which members of the Council used to don their robes before Council meetings and other civic occasions. The wearing of robes by Councillors ended at the reorganisation of local government in 1974.
