Old Town Hall, Gateshead

The first town hall in Gateshead was in Bush Yard.[1] The council subsequently established itself in a building in Greenesfield in 1844.[2] The foundation stone for the current building was laid in 1868: a stand collapsed during the ceremony killing a member of the public.[3] The current building was designed in the Italianate style by John Johnstone who had also designed Newcastle Town Hall.[4] Construction work on the Gateshead building was delayed after preparatory work penetrated a coal seam leading to the collapse of nearby properties and the building was eventually completed in 1870.[2] The design involved a symmetrical main frontage with seven bays facing onto West Street; the central section of three bays, which slightly projected forward, featured a round headed doorway on the ground floor, and three stained glass windows on the first floor: there was an ornately carved pediment with a statue depicting justice at roof level.[5]

The old town hall also served as a magistrates' court and a police station.[4] In 1892 an ornamental clock, which is Grade II listed and stands in front of the town hall,[6] was presented to Gateshead by the mayor, Walter de Lancey Willson, on the occasion of him being elected for a third time.[4] He was also one of the founders of Walter Willson's, a chain of grocers in the North East and Cumbria.[4] Queen Elizabeth II, accompanied by the Duke of Edinburgh, crossed the Tyne Bridge from the north and signed the town hall visitors' book at a small table on the south side of the bridge on 29 October 1954.[7][8][9]

The building remained the headquarters of the Metropolitan Borough of Gateshead until the council moved to Gateshead Civic Centre in Regent Street in 1987.[2] The town hall was occupied by the Microelectronics Applications Research Institute ('MARI') who established their head office in the building from 1987 to 2001.[10] It was then briefly used by the management of Sage Gateshead while they waited for their new building at Gateshead Quays to be competed in December 2004.[11]

The Tyneside Cinema occupied the town hall under a short term lease while a restoration and renovation project was undertaken on their premises in Newcastle upon Tyne between November 2006 and May 2008.[12] The main performance hall in the old town hall was refurbished in 2009[13] and the building was managed by Sage Gateshead from January 2013.[14] In 2018 it was acquired by "Dinosauria" which has announced plans to convert it into an "unnatural history museum".[15]