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The Old Town Hall -
King Street Manchester
 The Town Hall in Albert
Square, designed by Alfred Waterhouse, is an iconic
image for the city but it wasn't Manchester's first
Town Hall. In its early days the
administration of the city was actually conducted
from the Police Office on King Street but in 1822
work began on the construction of a dedicated Town
Hall building on the corner of King Street and Cross
Street. It was designed by Francis Goodwin in
a Grecian Style with a colonnaded facade.
 The map extract above
is from the Adshead maps of 1851 and shown here with
the permission of Chetham's Library.
 As the city boomed the
size of the city's admistration soon outgrew the
building and in 1877 they moved into Waterhouse's
masterpiece. The old town hall became a
library but eventually it was demolished. The
manchester architect Edgar Wood was among those who
campaigned to save the facade of the building and it
was dismantled and reassembled as a "folly" in
Heaton Park, where it can be seen today.
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Below is a very
atmospheric view of the colonnade beside the
boating lake at Heaton Park. It probably
dates from the 1930s. The image is shown
with the generous permission of Jenny Scott from Adelaide,
Australia
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