South Shields Town Hall
I love South Shields Town Hall
1910: MCMX. George V becomes, Dei Gratia, King and Emperor of India. Doomed Scott departs for the untrammelled Antarctic. The Vatican institutes the Oath Against Modernism. It is an old world.
Some of that old world survives. As if Moses had marked the place as holy, the civic vandalism of the 1960s did not do for South Shields Town Hall. No need for Betjamin in shining armour.
Shields Town Hall is a real marvel of Edwardian Baroque and, opened in 1910, it reflects in sandstone and Italian marble a vaunting maritime and municipal pride. Sneering and armoured, Britannia sits sentry above the portico, flanked by sea deities. She looms over even Queen Victoria. The all-copper weathervane is an Elizabethan galleon that, when brought down for cleaning, can sit two men.
The interior is stately, too: evidently it was once felt that the town was worthy of having things done well. Fine tiling, finest woodwork. A place suitable for the memorials to the town’s VC winners. I remember as a kid feeling there was some hushed grandeur in the Council Chamber, with the town’s seal floating above, and rich red seats like the House of Lords. When I got my A-level results, I went to a reception in the wood-panelled Mayor’s Parlour - so grand as to have an anteroom1 - and met a jovial bloke, thick-set and beetroot-face, in a thick set of gold chains. There was, yes, pomp to it.
The town hall would suit a national Parliament better than, I’m sad to say, the valiantly labouring-on council of a town whose glories must be remembered in a building from four monarchs ago. They only put up one Christmas tree now: Tory Britain.
Still, Shields Town Hall is a diamond built on coal money and the trifecta, like Arbeian Britannia’s trident, of Courage, Humanity and Commerce.
South Shields Town Hall. I love it.
In what is perhaps a sign of the times, the local paper spelt it “anti-room” on its effectively unreadable website: https://www.shieldsgazette.com/heritage-and-retro/retro/see-south-shields-town-halls-stunning-architectural-features-3434952.