'Symbols of Unity, Division and the Potteries' Heart of Darkness'
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The orgy of public building continued in the Potteries during the mid-1800s, and in 1863, Longton completed its own second town hall on Times Square, a short distance from the site of its first. 

Longton’s second town hall on Times Square

Burrill was the architect behind Longton’s new town hall, and followed the trend set by Henry Ward in Stoke, creating a classical civic monument in ashlar, but less grand in scale. The building was extended by Beckett in 1912.

In the mid-1980s, the City Council proposed to raze the building and replace it with a new office development. There was a huge public outcry, and a massive campaign was launched to save the building, a campaign that was won. As a result, Longton Town Hall was preserved and received Grade II Listed status.

However, a truly sustainable use has never been found for the building since (the latest proposal was for the City Council to use it as a call centre, a proposal which was met with as much opposition as its proposed Thatcher-era demolition). Longton Town Hall is still in need of saving given its place on a City Council hit list intended to help deliver financial savings. 

Tunstall’s second town hall – described by Pevsner as “ill-defined” – opened in 1883 at the eastern end of Tower Square, a Neo-Renaissance beauty in ashlar stone and brick built by the prolific A. R. Wood, one of the city’s most prominent and talented architects of the time.

The town hall building was the tenth in the Potteries in just over a hundred years, and also incorporated a covered market hall to the rear, and a parade of ground floor shop units either side of the main entrance, which included Taylor’s. Indeed, the insertion of various shop frontages served to disfigure the southern three bays of the building, something that I can clearly recall being annoyed with when I first took an interest in local architecture as a Youngster.

Today, Tunstall Town Hall is in a depressingly poor state, having been shamefully neglected by the City Council for a number of years. I recall attending a wedding reception there some fifteen years ago, and the building was in a shocking state back then; God only knows what sort of mess the place is in now, and our Respect Public Servants ought to hang their heads in shame. Indeed, I wouldn’t mind seeing a public flogging on Tower Square as an apology for their dreadful treatment of Tunstall’s greatest building.

The building still cries out for a sustainable new use, and whilst to the rear of the building, Dransfield Properties’ monstrous shed retail park hums with activity – and the redevelopment of this side of Tunstall was a huge opportunity missed in terms of the town hall – A. R. Wood’s civic masterpiece stands almost silent.

Tunstall Town Hall Number Two in better days Tunstall Town Hall Number Two today

Incredibly, Hanley saw its third town hall – and the Potteries’ eleventh – before the turn of the twentieth century, and just twelve months after Tunstall’s second, when the Queen’s Hotel, built by local architect Robert Scrivener in 1869, was reopened as Hanley Town Hall. 

A symmetrical brick and stone edifice, with French pavilion roofs; Hanley Town Hall is one of the most architecturally impressive of the city’s civic buildings, though in poor condition nowadays the building is still in municipal use, housing city council office staff and a registry office. However, the regeneration of Hanley (don’t laugh) may present a great opportunity for the City Council, and Hanley Town Hall may yet revert back to private as opposed to public use. Who knows, with its location adjacent to Victoria Hall, it may well become a hotel once more. 

Hanley Town Hall

Fenton’s one and only town hall sits at the town’s heart, Albert Square, built by that most prominent Fentonian, William Meath Baker in 1888. A watered-down Gothic and Tudor mix, the building’s architect was Robert Scrivener, and in many ways, is very similar to A. R. Wood’s Tunstall creation.

Fenton is unique in that it is the only one of the Six Towns to have only had one town hall. However, the building is now in use as the local magistrate’s court and so technically, Fenton is now the only one of the Six Towns not to have a town hall!

In order for Fenton Town Hall to function adequately as a court, the building had to be extended to the rear, and is a great disappointment, aping the ‘Leeds Look’ style of the 1980s pioneered by Leeds City Council’s Civic Architect, which saw the application of traditional materials but backed by poorly principled architecture.

The last of the Potteries’ thirteen town halls was built in the Mother Town, Burslem, and was the result of major political conflict around the time of the Federation.

Burslem’s new town hall was built in anticipation that the Mother Town would be the civic seat of the new County Borough of Stoke-on-Trent. Stoke were also vying for this new important role, and already had a new, modern town hall and associated facilities. However, this did not dissuade Burslem, and London-based architects Russell and Cooper were appointed and produced a large Classical monument to civic extravagance and largesse.

Burslem’s ‘new’ Town Hall, now the Queen’s Theatre

The first meeting of the new Council was held at the North Stafford Hotel, and the question of where the County Borough’s municipal centre should be was one of the first major issues confronted by the Council. Of course, Stoke was eventually chosen as the home of the County Borough of Stoke, and therefore Burslem’s ‘new’ town hall was redundant on completion, and became known as ‘Malkin’s Folly’, after Sydney Malkin, the pro-federation Burslem councillor who forced through the building of the new town hall.

This became a sign of things to come, and similar situations continue to arise, even today. Indeed, if such a decision was taken by the modern local authority, you would guarantee wall-to-wall Sentinel coverage and demands for heads to roll.

Today, the building is in use as the Queen’s Theatre, managed by local ‘entrepreneur’ Steve Ball, though performances there are few and far between and the building continues to deteriorate. Indeed, whilst local councillors and residents made an attempt to start civil war over the City Council’s offering of a long-lease on a peppercorn rent to the local Muslim community in order for them to build a new Mosque on a the edge of a former marl pit, no one seems to ask similar questions about their arrangement with respectable white business man Mr Ball.

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The City Civic Centre in Stoke

The modern local authority is of course still based at Stoke Town Hall and the adjoining Civic Centre (another Potteries example of ‘Leeds Look’ architecture): the Potteries’ Heart of Darkness.

Unity House (the old City Civic Centre)
stood just off The Potteries Way in Hanley
 

No other city in the country could have had such a long-list of civic headquarters as Stoke-on-Trent (if you include Unity House and the Civic Centre alongside the various town halls, an incredible fifteen buildings), and those that remain and their condition say a lot about the state of our city: rotting, deteriorating, empty…yet they also remain beacons of hope, and as the neighbouring Borough of Newcastle have demonstrated with their revamp of the Guildhall, such historic symbols of our civic past can still play a key role in our future."

David Proudlove 06 January 2010