Milnrow Town Hall

Milnrow Town Hall, formerly known as Milnrow Council Offices, is a former municipal building in Newhey Road, Milnrow, a town in Greater Manchester in England. The building, which served as the offices and meeting place of Milnrow Urban District Council, is currently vacant.

History
Following significant population growth, largely associated with the number of cotton mills in the area, a local board of health was established in Milnrow in 1870. The local board decided to commission dedicated offices in which to hold its meetings. The site they selected was open land on the northeast side of Newhey Road.

Construction work on the offices started in 1885. The building was designed in the Gothic Revival style, built in sandstone and was completed in 1889. The original design involved an asymmetrical main frontage of four bays facing onto Newhey Road. The left-hand bay featured a small window with an architrave on the ground floor and a mullioned and transomed window on the first floor, all surmounted by an entablature inscribed with the words "Milnrow Local Board of Health", a date stone with the date "1889" and a gable above. There was a clocktower with a belfry, a spire and a weather vane behind the gable. The third bay contained an arched entrance with an archivolt, a hood mould and a keystone on the ground floor, and an oriel window flanked by pinnacles on the first floor, all surmounted by a gable. The other two bays were fenestrated by mullioned and transomed windows on both floors. A fire station was built to the left of the main building and a police station to the right, around the same time that the main building was completed.

In 1894, the board was succeeded by Milnrow Urban District Council, which maintained its headquarters in the building which became known as the town hall. A Carnegie library was added, set back between the town hall and the police station, to a design by Butterworth and Duncan, in 1908. The library included a lecture room on the first floor, which doubled as the council chamber. After becoming unsafe, the original clock tower was dismantled and replaced by a tower of much cruder design, probably in the late 1930s.

The building continued to serve as the meeting place of the district council for much of the 20th century, but ceased to be the local seat of government when the enlarged Rochdale Borough Council was formed in 1974. The building briefly served as the health department of the new council. However, in 1979, the health department moved to new offices in central Rochdale.

In 2002, the building was sold to Milnrow Properties Limited. In 2005, plans were put forward to demolish the building and construct two apartment blocks, but these proposals were abandoned in the face of local opposition. The library was grade II listed in 2012. A lobby organisation entitled "The Friends of Milnrow Clock Tower and Library Group" was launched in 2014, with the aim of restoring public access to the former council chamber, and returning the town hall clock tower to working order.