The Town Hallof St. Marychurch

Built to the design of a local architect over a century ago, this magnificent building was used for the original purpose as a Town Hall for no more than seventeen years. The St. Marychurch Board of Health met there for the first time in 1883. In 1900 the town was incorporated by Act of Parliament into the Borough of Torquay, and the building, to use a modern term, became redundant.

It is perhaps a strange irony that by the time the building was completed the St. Marychurch Board of Health had already been in existence for seventeen years. They met wherever they could find a venue. Their first meeting in 1866 was in the Commercial Inn, Fore Street, now the Dolphin Public House.

There had of course been much discussion as to whether a town of less than 6,000 inhabitants could actually afford a Town Hall, and, if they could afford one, where it should be and how much it should cost. The matter was eventually resolved when the present site was given to the town by the Lord of the Manor, Robert Shedden Sulyarde Cary.

The Board held a public competition and offered a prize of £25 for “the best plan and specification of an office and stores together with a public room”.

The plans submitted by “Justitia” were approved unanimously. This was the nom de plume of George Sowden Bridgeman, a Torquay boy who had been educated in a private school started by William Pengelley, near where the GPO is now. He had already several buildings in Torquay and Paignton to his credit, including The Wigwam for Isaac Merritt Singer, the sewing machine magnate, which was later transformed by his son into the present Oldway Mansion.

In charge of the building was Alfred Harris, a master builder of Fore Street, St. Marychurch, and a former henchman of William Harvey, whose father Jacob Harvey founded the family which virtually built the early Victorian town of Torquay. The building cost £2,718 2s. 6d., with a further £154 for architect’s fees and £373 for furniture. It was made of local limestone with the mouldings, arches and mullions of Ham Hill stone from Ilminster.

On the ground floor were the offices for the Surveyor, the Collector and the Medical Officer, a “workmen’s meeting room” and storerooms, stables and a yard. The Town Clerk had his office on the first floor, alongside the Council Chamber and a public hall seating 400 people. Above that, on the second floor, was a suite of rooms for a School of Art, where classes were to be given in domestic science and in crafts and practical skills to enhance the competence of the workers in the St. Marychurch manufacturies, which were already famous for their lapidary work and terra cotta.

To mark the occasion of its opening the St. Marychurch Musical Society performed Handel’s Messiah in the public hall, while the exterior of the building was floodlit, if so ambitious a word can be used, by various gas-burning devices. The proceeds were donated to the School of Art. Then came the official opening, with a dinner, innumerable speeches, and selections played by the Italian band which then proceeded outdoors and led a torchlight procession through the town. The festivities continued into the early hours of the following day.

The Board had its first meeting in its new Town Hall on 8th November 1883, under the chairmanship of Mr. Sampson Hanbury. He was a brewer from the Midlands who had taken up residence in Bishopstowe, which had been built by the famous Bishop Phillpotts of Exeter and which is now the Palace Hotel. In 1894 the St. Marychurch Board became the St. Marychurch Urban District Council. Under the same Chairman, and meeting on the second Tuesday of each month, until their final meeting in October 1900, they presided over what a contemporary described as “one of the most advanced urban communities outside the metropolis”.

The building remained for many years a focal point for the local community, with the public hall being used for bazaars and dances. The offices were taken over by the Torquay Borough Council and later by the Devon County Council. In the depression of the thirties a soup kitchen was organised there, and in the last war it housed an outpost of the St. Marychurch Fire Station, a First Aid Post and a base for the Decontamination Squad services which were called upon when a German bomb fell in the vicinity on 25th October 1942.

The clock which graces the tower was presented in 1947 by the St. Marychurch and Babbacombe branch of the Women’s Voluntary Services, who had worked nearby throughout the war. In 1952 from the balcony beside it, the accession of Queen Elizabeth II was proclaimed by Alderman E.G. Ely.

St. Marychurch is a very special and a very proud part of Torquay. The Town Hall and its history is ample proof of that. Maybe one day a use will be found for the building that will enable it more adequately to serve the needs of the community.

Research: Edna White