MUNICIPAL BUILDINGS
TOWN HALL.
The town had presumably had
a hall in which to hold its courts since the earlier
12th century when it was given the right to have
its own justices, (fn. 11) and a common hall, later called
the moot hall, was recorded in 1277. (fn. 12) The
building on the north side of High Street,
demolished in 1843, was of the 12th century and
originally comprised a stone house, c. 40 ft. long,
lengthwise to the street, with a first floor hall. (fn. 13)
It had doorways in the north and south walls,
the south one at least being original, which
perhaps marked a screens passage separating the
hall from its chambers to the north. Both doors
were approached by steps, and the south one had
an 'entry' encroaching on the market place by
1367. (fn. 14) The north door opened into a large court
or garden where market stalls were erected. (fn. 15)
The south doorway was flanked by two elaborately carved windows, one of which survived
largely intact, but blocked, in 1843. It was of
two orders, both with decorated capitals, the
outer with colonettes, the inner with standing
figures; the inner archivolt was carved with pine
cones or bunches of grapes, the outer with a leaf
design and a human head at the apex. The
carving has been shown to be from the same
workshop as the west doorway of Rochester
cathedral, built c. 1160. (fn. 16)
By the later 14th century the hall was out of
repair and old fashioned, and it was remodelled
in 1373-4 at the instigation of the bailiff William
Reyne. Reyne rebuilt the steps to the doors, the
north ones in tiled stone, the south ones in
marble. The south steps and the outer door were
covered by a two-storey porch with an overhanging upper storey jutting out into the market
place; shops or stalls with solars above them
were built in the space between the south wall
of the hall and the street frontage, on either side
of the new porch. Reyne also restored the undercroft below the hall, enlarging the windows to
make it suitable for the wool market. He refurnished the main hall with benches and triple
sedilia. (fn. 17)
No major alterations seem to have been made
to the hall before its demolition in 1843, although repairs were carried out at intervals in
the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries, notably c.
1701 when the corporation borrowed £350 for
the repair of the moot hall, the bridges, and part
of High Street. (fn. 18) A turret, presumably the bell
turret above the entrance, was recorded in 1583,
and the room under the bell in 1618. (fn. 19) The hall
was taxed on three hearths in 1680 and 1681, but
the number was reduced to two in 1684. (fn. 20) Descriptions of the hall in 1579, 1748, and 1803
suggest that the internal arrangements changed
little. On the first floor was the main hall or moot
hall with, to the north, the exchequer which had
been partitioned by 1748 to provide a muniment
room. Above the exchequer and muniment room
was the council or freemen's chamber. (fn. 21) By 1683
other public buildings, including the gaol, adjoined the hall, probably on the west on land
owned by the corporation in the early 19th
century. (fn. 22)
The Town Hall of 1843
In 1764 the corporation leased to the Norwich
Company of Comedians, who had been performing in the moot hall since 1725, part of the moot
hall yard on which to build a theatre. (fn. 23) In 1828
the corporation leased the disused building back
for a term of 50 years as a sessions house and
additional gaol accommodation. (fn. 24)
The new town hall designed by John Blore and
R. Brandon was opened on the same site in 1845. (fn. 25)
Built at a cost of £6,000 raised mainly by public
subscription, it was a three-storeyed stone building, its front divided into five bays by six Roman
Doric pilasters surmounted by a cornice and a
balustrade; the borough arms were carved on the
raised central compartment. It contained a large
assembly hall called the moot hall, a court room,
a magistrate's room, committee rooms, a police
station and cells, and offices for the gaoler; by 1882
there were two court rooms. (fn. 26) By 1878 the hall was
inadequate and its foundations unstable; neighbouring properties were bought to extend and
buttress the building, but the work was not carried
out, and in 1897 the hall was demolished. (fn. 27)
In 1902 the third town hall on the site was
opened by the former Liberal prime minister,
Archibald Philip Primrose, earl of Rosebery.
The red brick and Portland stone building was
designed by Sir John Belcher in Renaissance
style. (fn. 28) The tower, windows, pictures, statues,
and furnishings of the hall were provided by gifts
and benefactions amounting to c. £12,000. The
capitals of the facade are decorated with wheat,
roses, and oyster shells; in niches around the
building at second floor level are set six life-size
marble statues of Eudes dapifer, Thomas Audley
Lord Audley, Dr. William Gilberd, Archbishop
Samuel Harsnett, King Edward the Elder, and
Boudicca. The 162-ft. high Victoria tower was
given by James Paxman and named after the
queen with her special permission; on the top is
a bronze statue of St. Helen. In the upper angles
of the tower are four bronze ravens symbolizing
the port of Colchester and in the lower angles
figures representing engineering, fishery, agriculture, and military defence. In the tower is a
chiming clock with five bells and a bell of c. 1400
believed to have come from the medieval moot
hall. Two law courts are on the ground floor,
from which rises an elaborate staircase of coloured marble. On the first floor are the mayor's
parlour, the grand jury room, and the council
members' room, which can all be opened into
one large room; also on the first floor is the
council chamber, its ceiling painted to John
Belcher's design with figures representing the
months; the three stained glass windows were
made by Messrs. Powell and Sons of the Whitefriars glass works. (fn. 29) Carved figures of a boy and
girl of the Bluecoat school are on the side walls
of the upper staircase leading to the second floor.
Most of that floor is taken up by the moot hall,
the principal assembly room, which has coupled
Corinthian columns surmounted by a frieze, an
elaborate cornice, and a barrel-vaulted coved
ceiling. (fn. 30)
In 1965 the corporation bought the Cups hotel,
west of the town hall, to provide additional office
accommodation; in 1975 part of the Treasurer's
department moved to Rebow chambers in Sir
Isaac's Walk. By 1985 council departments were
housed in buildings throughout the town, including the old public library in Shewell Road,
East Lodge and the Gatehouse in East Hill,
Northgate House in North Hill, and Lexden
Grange in Lexden. (fn. 31) New council offices, Angel
Court, were built in 1988 east of the town hall
connected to it by a tunnel beneath West Stockwell Street. (fn. 32)
PRISON.
The bailiffs used private houses to
imprison suspected offenders c. 1250, (fn. 33) but by
1285 they had custody of a gaol, which was
delivered from 1300. (fn. 34) In 1367 it was probably
below the moot hall, presumably with a door and
a window on the north side of the building as
prisoners were alleged to escape over an unrepaired
wall into St. Runwald's churchyard. William
Reyne's improvements in 1373 included placing
outside the moot hall door posts to which the
prisoners could be chained to beg; hitherto they
had had to stand in the 'shaft' which gave access
to the prison. (fn. 35) In 1618-19 the prisoners were
supplied with a leaded basket to gather food,
presumably by begging from passers by, which
suggests a window or other opening giving on
the street. (fn. 36) By 1579 there was a separate women's
gaol in an upper room in the moot hall, (fn. 37) perhaps
in the room over the porch.
In 1608 a house of correction was made out of
some chambers in the moot hall, (fn. 38) apparently in
the building west of the original hall. In 1624 or
1625 it appears to have been moved to other,
possibly new, buildings on the same or an
adjoining site. (fn. 39) Its equipment included a treadmill, housed in a separate building in 1628-9. (fn. 40)
The house of correction may have been the
bridewell recorded in 1681 which, in 1703, was
equipped with a handmill for grinding malt. (fn. 41)
The bridewell was turned into a gaol in 1730
when an earlier gaol, presumably in adjoining
buildings, was converted into houses. (fn. 42) In 1748
the gaol was below the moot hall and adjoining
buildings. (fn. 43) In 1801 it was filthy and offensive
and without an outside exercise yard. There was
one room for debtors and three other rooms each
7 ft. high; two on the ground floor were 16 ft.
by 11 ft. and 15 ft. square respectively, one on
the first floor was 15 ft. by 9 ft. All were lighted
and ventilated by small grated windows. Two
strongrooms, each 16 ft. by 11 ft., were probably
below the moot hall cellar. (fn. 44) A separate debtors'
prison was built in the north-west corner of the
moot hall yard in 1809; the timber and brick
building had a single day room on the ground
floor with three cells above, and appears to have
had windows in the west wall. (fn. 45) In 1822 all
categories of prisoners were held in the gaol;
those found guilty of capital offences were sent,
after sentence, to the county gaol. (fn. 46)
In 1834 the cells in the old town gaol still held
seven prisoners, and there were three cells in the
debtors' prison. There was no room for a treadwheel and sentences of hard labour were served
in the county gaol in Chelmsford. (fn. 47) By 1839 the
hall of the disused theatre in the north-east corner
of the moot hall yard, which had been used as
extra prison accommodation since c. 1828, was
being used as the men's exercise yard, and the
gallery had been converted into six women's cells
which in 1840 were made into a separate women's
prison. Men were still held in the old gaol, but
some of the oldest cells were not normally used.
Poor drains made the whole prison 'disgustingly
offensive', the cells were small and airless, and
there was no open air exercise yard. (fn. 48) In 1843 the
demolition of four of the seven cells in the men's
prison to make way for the new town hall and
the temporary use of the debtors' building to
house the prison governor during the rebuilding
caused serious overcrowding. (fn. 49) Cells built in the
basement of the new town hall seem not to have
been used for several years, and in 1849 the gaol
was still 'a wretched place of confinement' totally
unsuitable as a prison. Improvements had been
made by 1862 when there were 2 day rooms, 2
exercise yards, and 16 cells, some presumably in
the basement of the town hall. (fn. 50) The borough
council could not afford to meet all the requirements of the 1865 Prison Act, and by 1868 the
gaol was used only for remand prisoners and
juveniles, all other prisoners being sent to the
county gaol. (fn. 51) The gaol apparently closed in 1878
and was demolished, with the town hall, in 1896
and 1897. (fn. 52)
ALBERT HALL.
The hall, at the west end of
High Street, was built as a corn exchange in 1845
to designs by Raphael Brandon. It has a front of
five narrow bays, the three recessed middle ones
being divided by two Ionic columns supporting
a shallow portico. Each of the central bays
contains an arched doorway; the two outer bays
originally contained niches holding life-size
figures symbolizing ancient and modern agriculture, but the niches were replaced by windows,
perhaps when the building was converted into a
school in 1885. In 1991 the statues stood at the
entrance to St. Mary's multi-storey car park on
Balkerne Hill. A statue of Britannia above the
centre of the portico was made of such soft stone
that it quickly eroded and was removed. The
building closed as a corn exchange in 1884 and
reopened in 1885 as the Albert School of Art
and Science, which became the responsibility of
the borough council in 1894. The hall was used
for educational purposes until 1912 (fn. 53) and as a
Food Control office during the First World War.
After years of disuse, major alterations were
made in 1926; a stage, foyer, and gallery were
built and the building was used as an assembly
hall, art gallery, and theatre until 1972. By 1974
it was being used as a stationery store by Cullingford and Co. (fn. 54) In 1980 the council sold it to
property developers (fn. 55) and in 1991 the restored
building housed the Co-operative Bank and the
General Accident Assurances Corporation.
The PUBLIC HALL, later ST. GEORGE'S
HALL, behind no. 156 High Street was not,
despite its name, a municipal building. The red
brick hall with apsidal ends was built in 1851
primarily for the use of the Mechanics Institution. (fn. 56) After the Institution's closure in 1860
it was used as a library and reading room,
lecture room, and theatre until the owners,
the Colchester New Public Hall Co. Ltd.,
went into liquidation in 1897. The hall then
changed hands several times and had a number
of uses: as a magistrates' court and cells, a
clothing factory, and a club for the troops in the
First World War. In 1920 it was bought by
Henry Elwes, renamed St. George's Hall, and
became a young men's club and then a centre
for the unemployed. The neighbouring Repertory Theatre used the hall as a workshop from
1937 to 1967. Cullingford and Co. bought the
premises in 1948 and rented the basement out
separately. From c. 1960 they used half the hall
as a stockroom and took over the whole of the
ground floor in 1967. (fn. 57)