The Morris Hall with boundary wall and gate, Shrewsbury

Summary

A public hall built in 1933 to designs by W J Harris.

Reasons for Designation

Morris Hall, Shrewsbury, a public hall of 1933 by W J Harris, is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:

Architectural interest:

* it is a good example of the revival of historical English architectural styles that was popular in the inter-war years, and it is an interesting building fulfilling a very specific design brief;

* the building has been little altered, and survives with a high level of integrity to its original design;

* internally, the building is liberally furnished with high quality joinery and fixtures which survive well.

Historic interest:

* privately designed and commissioned buildings for the use of a political party are a rare type of building in the early-C20;

* the building reflects the personal contribution of its commissioner, JK Morris, to the commercial and political life of Shrewsbury.

History

Morris Hall takes its name from James Kent Morris (1872-1935) of the Morris Company of Shrewsbury, a notable local socialist politician. Morris’s standing in the Labour movement was such that in 1903 Keir Hardie (1856-1915) came to Shrewsbury to speak in support of his successful campaign to be elected to the town council as a ‘Trades and Labour’ party candidate. Morris remained a councillor until 1908, by which time ‘Trades and Labour’ had become the Labour Party.

Morris saw the need for a local meeting hall for the Labour Party, and in 1932 a suitable site became available on Bellstone, (the name of a street on the western side of Shrewsbury’s market hall in the town’s centre), which was being widened. Plans for the hall were drawn by a W Harris in 1932, and a W J Harris of London is credited as the architect in an account of the hall’s renaming ceremony (see below) in the Wellington Journal. The widening required demolitions on the west side of the road where the C16 Bellstone House was situated, and the new hall was built in what had been the gardens to the rear of this house. The name Bellstone is taken from a boulder of volcanic rock thought to have been transported from Cumbria to Shrewsbury as a glacial erratic during the last Ice Age. This stone is on display next to the right hand post to the gate in front of the steps leading up to the hall. The hall is around 90m east of the Grade I listed St Chad’s Church (National Heritage List for England 1344941), whose churchyard is adjacent. The hall is accessed through an archway in the Old Bank Buildings which front the post-widening west side of Bellstone.

The new hall was designed to appear as two attached sections: an older, medieval hall to the north, and a Tudor house to the south. This looking back to past English architectural styles was typical of the Arts and Crafts movement of the late C19 and early C20, a movement that was associated with socialism and prominent socialists such as William Morris (1834-1896). James Kent Morris made sure to employ local craftsmen using traditional methods to build the hall, so the building was an embodiment of his personal political views on the value of skilled labour. However, despite this show of adherence to the popular socialist values of the day, the hall also demonstrates Morris’s expediency or business acumen; the rear part of the hall, which is visible only from the small back garden, is of a much more standard and utilitarian style and finish than the front, despite being built at the same time. Marrying the design idea of reviving historic styles with good business sense, much of the building material was reclaimed from older buildings. Stone was re-used from the demolished Bellstone House, and all the timber framing was reused from other historic buildings. Morris stated that some of the timber came from nearby Lymore House in Montgomeryshire, which in 1931 had been dismantled and sold for building materials, and that the stone for the walls flanking the external steps had come from the garden of Charles Darwin’s childhood home.

The hall was opened by Morris on 2nd March 1933 and was initially named Bellstone Hall. The construction had been financed privately by Morris, though in 1934 he transferred the hall’s ownership to a trust established to run the building on behalf of the Shrewsbury Labour Party. The trust was empowered to run the hall as they saw most fit, and, aside from being for the use of the Labour Party, the hall continues (at time of writing in 2024) to be booked for events such as weddings, classes and meetings for a range of clubs and organisations.
Morris died in January 1935, and in March 1936 a re-naming ceremony was held where the new name, ‘Morris Hall’ was declared by the former Labour Party leader George Lansbury (1859-1940). In the late 1940s the smaller meeting room in the southern, Tudor style part of the building was named in honour of the local trade unionist Samuel George Lake (1871-1944). The commemorative plaque to Lake was unveiled by another notable Labour Party figure, Philip Noel-Baker (1889-1982). Noel-Baker was distinguished for being not only a cabinet minister, but also an Olympic silver medallist and Nobel laureate.

Details

A public hall built in 1933 to designs by W J Harris.

MATERIALS: timber frame with brick infill on sandstone rubble blocks, solid brick, or brick with limestone dressings. The roof covering is Broseley clay tile.

PLAN: the building is roughly rectangular. It is of four adjoining elements: the northern end is the medieval-style hall, south of this is a narrower linking porch and lobby section, and southernmost is the Tudor-style south block. Behind the linking section and southern block (to the west) is a flat-roofed block.

EXTERIOR: openings to the west and south elevations of all the elements are under lintels made up of cemented layers of thin clay tiles. In accordance with their respective styles, bricks to the medieval inspired hall and porch sections are 2” thick, those to the ‘Tudor’ south block are 2 and 3/8”, and those to the rear section are standard sized.

The northernmost hall block is double-height under a pitched roof with moulded bargeboards to its north and south gable ends. It has timber-framed walls with brick infill on a base of sandstone rubble blocks. Windows are tall with stone mullion and transoms and diamond leaded lights. They vary in width from one to three mullions. The hall is in three bays, with its east (front) elevation having a window to each, the central window being widest. The north elevation of the hall is solid except for a single-storey, double-windowed lean-to accommodating the dais internally. The rear, west elevation of the hall is solid brick. It is three bays; the central bay has a brick chimney breast which rises through the eaves then tapers to its top where there is a Tudor-style chimney pot. The side bays each have one window.

The lobby section is single storey under a pitched roof with its slopes to east and west. Its walls are timber-framed with brick infill. The porch projects east under a pitched roof whose gable has carved bargeboards. The door is coffered timber under an ogee-arch head. Tall, narrow, diamond-leaded margin lights flank the door. On either side of the porch is a pair of windows set into the timber framing of the wall; these have leaded lights in a tessellating pattern of small squares and large octagons.

The Tudor-style south block is two storeys under two pitched roofs intersecting at right angles, with the larger roof (to the north) having its gables to east and west, and the smaller a single gable to the south. The front, east elevation is in two bays, the northern of which is defined by the gable end of the larger roof. Windows have chamfered stone mullions with rectangular leaded lights with ‘Y’ tracery to the square heads. The northern bay has a five-light window to the ground floor and a three-light one above, with a smaller transom window in the south bay at first floor level. There is a timber plank door in an ashlar surround with a shallow gothic-arch-shaped head in the south bay. A drip mould separates the two floors, rising slightly over the five-light window, and the first floor three-light window has its own drip mould. There are ashlar quoins to the brick walls, and ashlar blocks to the kneelers of the north bay’s gable. Central in the north gable is a diamond shaped stone carved with Shrewsbury’s town arms. The first floor of the north elevation is visible above the roof of the adjoining porch section where, to the east, is a single window in a stone surround, west is a chimney stack with two ornately decorated Tudor style pots. The chimney rises from behind a low parapet gable decorated with a diamond-shaped piece of sandstone carved with quartered royal arms.

The rear flat-roofed section has elevations to the west and south. It is brick, two storey, and accommodates the kitchen, cloak room, toilets and stair hall at ground floor level and part of the caretaker’s flat above. Some of the windows are late-C20 replacements.

INTERIOR: the entrance hall has five doorways giving access to adjacent rooms. From within the stair lobby the stairs lead to the first floors of the south block and flat-roofed section; originally the caretaker’s flat, now (2024) an office room and a privately rented flat. Floors are largely woodblock, though the stair lobby has floorboards, the porch has brick and tile laid in geometric patterns and the cloakroom, kitchen and toilets have terrazzo. The toilets retain their original wall tiling.

The interior is richly decorated, with walls plastered with an uneven finish. Decorative joinery is extensive in medieval and Tudor styles and includes mouldings with leaf and grapevine motifs, wood panelling to the lower parts of the walls, and carved doors and architraves. The ceiling to the entrance lobby has a roof lantern. The main hall has a ribbed and barrel-vaulted ceiling and a fireplace in the west wall which has a fireback with a lion motif with a date of 1649. Over the fireplace is the memorial to J K Morris by the Bromsgrove Guild, supplied at a cost of £110 in 1936, with an inscribed quote from William Morris. The north end of the hall has a raised dais with three steps up on the left-hand side. The south wall of the S G Lake room displays a plaque to the memory of Lake.

SUBSIDIARY FEATURES:
The boundary wall to the east is in red sandstone blocks, with square chamfered limestone caps to the gateposts for the simple iron gate. The gateposts each support a lantern. Through the gate, stone steps lead upwards, flanked by a red sandstone wall with occasional capped posts. At the top of the steps the flanking walls extend north and south.

Sources

Websites
1933 Description by J K Morris of his new hall on Morris Hall's website, accessed 5 June 2024 from https://morrishallshrewsbury.org.uk/history/

Other
Ordnance Survey 1:1250 Epoch a5, published 1964
Shrewsbury Memorial to Mr. J. K. Morris: Bellstone Hall Re-Named ‘Morris Hall'. Wellington Journal, 7 March 1936

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