Andover Guildhall

Andover Guildhall
Andover Guildhall
Location	High Street, Andover
Coordinates	51°12′28″N 1°28′45″W / 51.2078°N 1.4793°W / 51.2078; -1.4793Coordinates: 51°12′28″N 1°28′45″W / 51.2078°N 1.4793°W / 51.2078; -1.4793
Built	1825
Architectural style(s)	Neoclassical style
Listed Building – Grade II*
Official name	Guildhall
Designated	24 February 1950
Reference no.	1236337
Shown in Hampshire

Andover Guildhall is a municipal building in the High Street, Andover, Hampshire, England. The guildhall, which was the headquarters of Andover Borough Council, is a Grade II* listed building.^[1]

History[]

The first guildhall in Andover was built in around 1513^[2] and remodelled in 1574.^[3] By the early 19th century it had become dilapidated and civic leaders decided to erect a more substantial structure on the same site.^[4] The new building was designed in the neoclassical style, built in ashlar stone and was completed in 1825.^[5] The design involved a symmetrical main frontage with five bays facing south down the High Street; the central section of three bays, which slightly projected forward and was rusticated, featured three round headed openings on the ground floor and three sash windows on the first floor flanked by Doric order columns supporting an entablature, a frieze and a large pediment.^[1] The frieze featured circular decorations above the columns and also recorded the date of completion.^[1] At roof level, there was originally a central clock tower but the clock was later moved to the centre of the pediment.^[1]

In November 1830, during the Swing Riots, a group of 300 protesting agricultural labourers set off from the Angel Inn in Andover for Taskers Foundry at Upper Clatford where they destroyed much of the machinery:^[6] the foundry must have recovered because the floor in the guildhall was strengthened with iron columns from the foundry in 1834.^[7] The town hall was again at the centre of a riot in 1914, when magistrates imprisoned a teenager, Phyllis Beckenham, and her mother for non-payment of fines after, against the wishes of the court, she had accosted a shopkeeper, the supposed father of her child: a group of some 2,000 protestors, who supported the teenager, ransacked many of the shops in the High Street.^[8]

During the First World War, recruitment rallies took place outside the town hall to attract potential soldiers for Kitchener's Army.^[9] A war memorial, designed by Captain Herbert Cowley to commemorate the lives of local service personnel who had died in the First World War, was unveiled in front of the guildhall by the Lord Lieutenant of Hampshire, Major General J. E. B. Seely, on 5 May 1920.^[10] In preparation for an expansion scheme, which did not ultimately proceed, the war memorial was relocated to St Mary's Churchyard in 1956.^[11]

The guildhall continued to serve as the headquarters of Andover Borough Council for much of the 20th century^[12] but ceased to be the local seat of government when the enlarged Test Valley District Council was formed in 1974.^[13][14] A petition was launched in around 2014 to move the war memorial back in front of the town hall where it would be more visible^[15] but, after several debates over the issue, the council announced that it had no plans to resturn the memorial to its original position.^[16] The ground floor of the town hall was converted for use as a restaurant in 2010^[17] but the main assembly hall on the first floor remained available for community use.^[18]

References[]