Former North Shields Municipal Complex

Former North Shields Municipal Complex

This is a substantial former municipal complex comprising the former town hall, police station, Board of Guardians offices, mechanics institute, post office and Tynemouth County Borough Council offices. The buildings were constructed between 1837 and 1894 to designs by John and Benjamin Green, John Dobson and the Borough Surveyors, executed in neo-Tudor, Elizabethan and Gothic styles.

Materials and Construction

The complex is built of coursed squared tooled sandstone with ashlar dressings to moulded string bands, doors and window surrounds, roof copings and chimneys. The roofs are covered in Welsh and Lakeland slate, with stone copings and rendered chimneys.

Plan

The building comprises several elements which collectively form a U-shape on plan, built abutting the former Wesleyan Reformed Methodist church. An L-shaped extension sits within an internal square courtyard.

Exterior

The complex occupies a prominent street-end location with elevations facing Howard Street, Saville Street and Norfolk Street. The buildings stand two and three storeys high with a partial basement and attics, constructed in several design phases.

On the corner of Howard Street and Saville Street stands the first construction phase of 1836-1837, designed by John and Benjamin Green as the former Poor Law Guardians offices. This two-storey building has Dutch gables and three bays to each street elevation, with a double-pitched and hipped roof and truncated chimneys. Facing Howard Street is the abutting four-bay, two-storey building of 1866-1868, designed by the borough surveyor as the former post office and offices. It has a hipped gable end and pitched roof with five tall octagonal ashlar chimney stacks.

Extending along Saville Street is a six-bay, two-storey building of 1844-1845, built as the former town hall and police station, which has a pitched roof and an early 21st-century square stair block to the rear. The three-storey corner building at Saville Street and Norfolk Street (extending and forming part of the Saville Street elevation) dates from 1845-1846 with mid-19th-century alterations. Built as the Mechanics Institute and Museum (later police court), it has a pitched roof with two pairs of dormers to each side and four chimneys—two octagonal ashlar stacks and two with crenelated copings.

Adjoining the former Mechanics Institute on Norfolk Street is a three-bay, three-storey building of 1865, designed by the borough surveyor as the former fire engine house. It has a pitched roof and one chimney. External and internal alterations by the borough surveyors took place across the interconnected buildings between the 1850s, 1860s, 1890s and 20th century.

Howard Street Elevation

The main elevation to Howard Street is two storeys with partial attics and seven bays. The three right-hand bays of 1837 (former Board of Guardians offices) have two Dutch-shaped gables with moulded ashlar kneelers and quoins and a recessed central bay beneath a bracketed and moulded parapet. A central mid-20th-century moulded and keystoned doorway has a stone mullion overlight with four-pane window casements and a late 20th-century double door. To each side is an early 21st-century shop frontage with a shallow ashlar stallriser. On the first floor are three stone cross-frame windows with hoodmoulds containing multi-pane casement windows. The shaped gables above have blind pointed-arch attic lights.

To the left, the two-storey, four-bay range of 1866-1868 (former post office and offices) now forms part of the theatre and offices known as The Exchange (2022). It has moulded battlemented parapets between four octagonal chimney stacks and three moulded string bands which form hood moulds over the ground- and first-floor windows and run below the first-floor window sills. The first bay has a six-light mullion and transom window with arched top lights on the ground floor, with a similar ten-light window in the third bay. On the first floor the first, third and fourth bays have arched-top, three-light mullion windows with one-over-one pane sashes.

The second bay projects slightly and has a gable rising above the height of the parapet. On the ground floor is a moulded, four-pointed arch doorway with plank and batten double doors and an adjacent moulded four-pointed arch window frame with traceried two-light arched window. On the first floor is a central mullion and transom window with reticulated tracery, and at attic level is an ogee arched ventilation window with a trefoil head below a finialled gable apex. The fourth bay has a four-pointed archway to a covered passage with double iron gates and a 19th-century castellated top-grille, providing entry to the inner courtyard, theatre reception and shop, bar and offices.

Saville Street Elevation

The right return to Saville Street is two and three storeys and ten bays. The three left bays of 1837 (former Board of Guardians offices) are similar to the three bays on Howard Street. The left two bays have an early 21st-century shop frontage and two first-floor stone cross-frame windows with hoodmoulds below a bracketed and moulded eaves cornice. The third bay projects slightly and has a Dutch gable with a ball finial at its apex. It has a mid-20th-century stone door surround matching that to Howard Street, now converted to a window. The first floor has a similar cross-frame window with hoodmould and a blind pointed-arch attic light.

To the right is the two-storey, six-bay former town hall and police station, and at the right-hand end the three-storey former Mechanics Institute and Museum with a homogenised mid-19th-century re-fronting which stylistically matches the borough surveyor's design to Howard Street. The fourth to ninth bays have battlemented and moulded parapets and four-moulded string bands to each floor, forming hoodmoulds to windows and doors. The fourth bay has a stepped four-pointed arch doorway with plank and batten double doors. To the right on the ground floor are five stone window surrounds containing two-over-two casement windows; the window in the seventh bay was formerly the police station entrance doorway with a mullioned overlight. The first floor has six windows with stone mullion and transom frames of four lights with arched top lights. The three-storey tenth bay is gabled with framing octagonal ashlar stacks, a large central oriel window on the first and second floors with stone mullion and transom frames with arched top lights, and four two-light mullion windows on the ground floor.

Norfolk Street Elevation

The elevation to Norfolk Street has five bays of two storeys and an attic and three bays of three storeys, with pitched slate roofs and two ridge stacks with crenelated copings. The quoined buttress corner to Norfolk Street and Saville Street marks the re-fronting of the Saville Street elevation in the mid-19th century.

The first to fifth bays are in the Elizabethan style by John Dobson (1844-1845), with a chamfered plinth and ashlar dressings to windows and doors and a stair bay to the fifth bay with a lower roofline. On the ground floor, the second bay has a chamfered four-centred arched doorway with steps up to a deeply recessed plank and batten double door with a stone tracery toplight of five pointed-arch lights. The fifth bay has a similar, smaller doorway with a plank and batten door. The first, third and fourth bays have stone cross-frame windows with quoined surrounds on the ground floor. The first floor has four large stone cross-frame windows of six lights with a two-light stone mullion stair window to the right. The attic storey has two large gabled dormers with bargeboards and timber cross-frame casement windows.

Adjoining to the right is a three-bay building of 1865 (the former fire engine house by Borough Surveyor James Robson). The ground floor has a wide two-centred arch with giant keystone, double doors and an adjacent pedestrian doorway with a giant keystone, decorative timber door and etched overlight, with two square-headed windows to the right. The first and second floors both have central three-light stone mullion windows flanked by a square-headed window, all with asymmetrical two-over-one pane horned sashes.

Central Courtyard

The central courtyard is paved. The lower courtyard elevations are obscured by the modern extension. The rear of the fire engine house is of red brick with three second-floor windows and two upper windows to Dobson's adjoining stair block. Projecting from the rear elevation of the former police station and town hall is a crenelated early 21st-century square stair block. The rear elevation of the former post office has two ground-floor windows and three upper-floor windows, with an early 21st-century two-storey glazed window panel. The ground floor has a Second World War stained glass window commemorating Tommy Brown, the fifteen-year-old Navy, Army and Air Force Institute hero.

Interior

The municipal complex is now two separate but linked buildings identified as the Saville Exchange (offices, 2022) and Exchange Theatre (theatre and offices, 2022). They contain late 19th- to early 20th-century five-panel doors set into heavily moulded and square-stopped door architraves, moulded window surrounds with panelled soffits, jambs and aprons which retain secondary double casement glazed windows, deep moulded skirting boards, moulded picture rails and moulded cornicing. Some ornamented late 19th-century radiators remain.

Former Poor Law Guardians Offices, Town Hall, Police Station, Mechanics Institute, Museum and Borough Offices (Saville Exchange)

This building is now known as the Saville Exchange (2022). It is entered via three doorways from Norfolk Street and Saville Street and also an internal courtyard entrance, with a shopfront on Howard Street.

The left-hand entrance on Norfolk Street has a lobby with an 1840s four-centred arch door surround and an early 20th-century glazed and wooden porch screen. A spine corridor now has three office suites to the left and one to the right, with an early 21st-century stair block and lavatories (the corridor partitioned by safety and security doors). At the far end is a modern double-height reception area with glazing facing into the internal courtyard. The stone doorways on the left (southern) side of the spine corridor and in the reception area form part of the historic fabric and plan form of the former police station. The corridor also contains a wide, late 19th-century doorway with a stone chamfered lintel resting on corbels and chamfered jambs which relates to the redevelopment of the police station between 1893-1894. In the reception area is a simple, chamfered mid-19th-century doorway from John Dobson's original design for the 1844-1845 police station. There is also a late 19th-century door to the south leading to the stairwell and entrance from Saville Street. A modern glazed double door opens into the central courtyard and another modern door opens into the former Poor Law Guardians offices.

The fifth-bay entrance on Norfolk Street opens into John Dobson's finely carved stair block with a matching four-centred arch door surround and a curved ashlar stone stair with recessed and ramped handrail with scrolled and foliated handrail ends, which rises to the second floor and terminates with moulded capping. The second floor has an exposed timber ceiling of three beams on moulded corbels with exposed joists, a plank ceiling and a central ventilation roundel. The stair block gives access to both upper floors of the former fire engine house (now offices) and the northern end of the second-floor hall (the former museum, later borough surveyor's office).

The second-floor hall is of six bays with two dormers to each side in the second and fifth bays, a bay window to the southern end of the room and a two-over-two sash window to the northern end. The ceiling also contains attic hatches and two blind three-light attic windows. The roof has stop-chamfered jointed arch-braced trusses supported on moulded posts, with a plank ceiling and four-centred moulded arches on corbels between the bays supporting the lower purlins. The room contains a stone chamfered and moulded fire surround with a shaped opening containing a cast-iron arched firebox. The former fire station house has one room on the first floor with a blocked, square-stopped moulded arch marking the entrance to now-demolished rear extensions behind the fire engine house.

The entrance on Saville Street (now secondary entrance, 2022) enters a lobby with late 19th-century moulded and dentillated cornicing and a glazed and panelled porch screen containing foliated etched glass with the Old Tynemouth Borough coat of arms and the Latin motto "messis ab altis". Beyond is a stairwell with an ornamented and bordered aggregate polished floor and 19th-century bull-nosed stone stairs with a moulded handrail with barley-twist wrought iron balustrades up to the first floor.

The first floor has a shorter spine corridor which retains a 19th-century square, decorative stained-glass overlight set in a margined wooden frame. Two doors, one a stone moulded and chamfer-stopped round-arched doorway, enter the former town hall and justice court hall (now office, 2022). The hall has moulded and dentillated cornicing supporting a moulded coffered, arched ceiling and three moulded roundels containing water sprinkler systems. A north-west doorway enters an ante-chamber (now with a kitchen, 2022). The ante-chamber retains a 19th-century hagioscope window overlooking the town hall entrance from Saville Street and two further plain doorways into the former Poor Law Guardians hall (office, 2022) which has a moulded beamed ceiling.

At the eastern end of the spine corridor, overlooking Norfolk Street, is the former police court (now workspace, 2022) which has substantial moulded wooden ceiling beams with corbelled cross beams supported on ceiling brackets with dagger tracery and wooden shafted buttresses and brackets ornamented with bell capitals or corbels. The bay window to Saville Street has a secondary glazed and wooden panelled screen ornamented with bell capital shafts and glazed pointed lights and spandrels.

Former Post Office Building (The Exchange)

This building is now known as The Exchange with a theatre and first-floor offices. The main entrance is from Howard Street, with a glazed theatre entrance, reception and shop accessed from the covered passage. The Howard Street doorway opens into a hallway with a stone stair (with an open string ballusters and moulded handrail) and five doors either side. An end door enters the theatre foyer with a meeting room on the right (containing the stained glass window commemorating Tommy Brown), the auditorium on the left (in the adjacent former United Methodist Church building), and doorways to the modern courtyard extension (bar and café, 2022). The first floor has a central landing with three office suites and a boiler room extending to the left and a subdivided former hall room, providing office space and a secondary reception area to the auditorium's balcony.