The Duke Returns
In 1954, in a Chronicle article entitled “The Victoria Hall – A White Elephant”, Alderman Joseph Dempsey Doyle said that a better site for the town’s main public hall would be the space over the indoor market, but the cost was beyond what the Council could afford. The idea resurfaced in 1963, when the Isaac and Harriet Jackson Trust offered £20,000 towards it (the equivalent of £430,000 today) and by 1966 it had become part of a much larger scheme. New estates were being built in Hadfield, Simmondley and Gamesley, and the Council was planning for twice as many people.
The intention was “to create a group of buildings which will become a focus for the life of the town.” The Municipal Buildings would be extended west, on stilts, with parking and toilets underneath, plus a canopy over the outdoor market. Extra rooms would be added to the Town Hall to house two courts simultaneously, and under it, the Arcade would be completely revamped, removing the “unfortunate” Victorian shop fronts obscuring Matthew Ellison Hadfield’s Italianate arches. And above the indoor market, there would be an Assembly Hall for to 600 people seated “or 300 couples dancing.”
The widening of the Arcade, then just a narrow, gloomy corridor into the Market Hall, “would open up an impressive approach to the main staircase to the Assembly Hall” and “make possible the creation of some finely-detailed shop fronts, in character with the design of the colonnade.” To create the right ambience “it would be necessary to maintain some control on the type of shop. Uses such as watchmaker and jeweller, optician, gowns, china and glass, tailor or antiques, would be appropriate.” They wouldn’t thrive, though, if it remained a cul-de-sac on days when the market wasn’t open, so there would be permanent walk-throughs to Victoria Street and the market ground.
By 1969, however, the Council was getting cold feet. The estimate was £5.4 million at today’s prices, and the plan was now just to build the shell for an eventual Assembly Hall. Reorganisation of local government was also on the cards, with the possibility that the Council would disappear and the extra offices wouldn’t be needed.
In the end, the town got just parts of the scheme. Out went the Assembly Hall, the new offices and the market canopy (although the toilets survived); the courts got their extra space in the form of tacky flat-roofed extensions on the back of the Town Hall; and in October 1973, in one of the last acts of Glossop Council, the Mayor, George Chatterton, once one of the caretakers, opened the revamped Market Hall.
It had a false ceiling, cutting out natural light and the view of the decorative ironwork, but allowing the space to be properly heated – Councillor Chatterton recalled “the obsolete heating fans and leaking roof – many times we had to heat it on Thursday afternoons to pacify the tenants, and this got lost after a few hours because of the height of the building.”
The stalls were, however, all tenanted and fixed, removing the “flexible space” there had been since 1845. There was, therefore, nowhere for casual or one-day traders other than outside (with no canopy), and nowhere indoors on non-market days for craft or antique fairs or artisan markets. It was more shopping mall than market, which did increase the town’s “retail offer” on the three days it was now open, but which couldn’t respond to changes in shopping behaviour.
The café was now in the hall, and the toilets outside, allowing High Peak Council to remedy what Cllr Chatterton called “a disgrace to the town” and open up the Arcade, stripping out the accumulations of 135 years and restoring at least something of the original concept. However, despite a grant from European Architectural Heritage Year, it was a pale shadow of the 1966 vision, minus the “finely-detailed shop fronts”, walk-through and antiques, and within 25 years it was being described as “a graffiti-daubed eyesore…dark, drab and uninviting.”
That, however, was to come. By December 1975 the old shops were going, and in October 1976, when it was (nearly) complete, it was opened (see pic) by Major-General Miles Francis Stapleton Fitzalan-Howard, 17th Duke of Norfolk and 4th Baron Howard of Glossop. As the Leader of the Council said, “on this occasion there could obviously be no other person.”
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