Report - Sheffield Court House - Sheffield March 2014

Visited with Auntie Knickers, H1971, Altair, King Mongoose and the newly named "Ninja" Wombat.

Woke up at stupid time straight after the piss up, over time we all imerged, some nursing a sore heads and lack of sleep,we all headed over to the site, with some noise, crashed and banged and proving a wombat can not fly we all managed to get in

History

Sheffield Old Town Hall stands on Waingate in central Sheffield, England, opposite Castle Market.
The building was commissioned to replace Sheffield’s first town hall, which had opened in 1700 to a design by William Renny. This first structure stood by the parish church, on a site with little prospect for extension.

The Old Town Hall was built in 1807–8 by Charles Watson, and was designed to house not only the Town Trustees but also the Petty and Quarter Sessions. The initial building was a five-bay structure fronting Castle Street, but it was extended in 1833 and again in 1866 by William Flockton (1804-1864) of Sheffield and his partner for the project, Abbott; the most prominent feature was the new central clock tower over a new main entrance that reoriented the building to Waingate. At the same time, the building’s courtrooms were linked by underground passages to the neighbouring Sheffield Police Offices.
Waingate in 1857: the Old Town Hall with its first clock tower on the left

The first Town Council was elected in 1843 and took over the lease of the Town Trustees’ hall in 1866. The following year, the building was extensively renovated, with a clock tower designed by Flockton & Abbott being added.