In 1903 a thirty year old architect won a competition to design new Law Courts and Council offices for the City of Hull. The design he produced was so overwhelming that, on its completion in 1911, it was felt that it made the existing Town Hall looked too small and he was commissioned to replace it with the new Guildhall. (This is even more extraordinary when we consider that the old Town Hall had been designed by Cuthbert Broderick (1822-1905), architect of, one of the greatest pieces of Victorian monumental Classicism, Leeds Town Hall (1853-8).)  The completed complex is one of the most distinctive pieces of architecture in the city.

Fig. 1 The Guildhall from Lowgate

The architect was Thomas Edwin Cooper (1873-1942). He was born in Scarborough, further up the Yorkshire coast from Hull, and was apprenticed to a local architect after his mother was widowed. Cooper assisted in a number of London firms before setting up his own practice. The details of his work draw on the "classicism as a revived style", current in London at the time, but the robust underlying architectural forms owe something to the continuous classical tradition that existed in the north of England. A. Stuart Gray comments that:

As early as the 1900s Cooper had heralded the style of the reign of King George V - greater correctness with diminished vitality. But ... the power of his personal style compensated for the loss of vigour which characterised the period.

In 1903 Cooper was in partnership with Samuel Bridgeman Russell (1864-1955), but the partnership dissolved in 1912 and he carried on work on the Guildhall alone. In 1923, Cooper was knighted for his services to architecture.

The Law Courts are no longer used and the whole building is now used for council purposes and is usually referred to simply as "The Guildhall". Although there is a clear continuity of materials and of detail between the two parts, there are also enough differences to create a tension in the composition.

The buildings are clad with Ancaster limestone and Darley Dale sandstone; Hull is built on an estuary with no local stone and these prestigious materials were imported from other parts of the country. The main structure and the walls of internal courtyards are of brick. The roofs are covered with slate; another imported material.

Fig. 2 The elevation to Alfred Gelder Street

The Law Courts stretch for thirty-five bays along Alfred Gelder Street, incorporating two fifteen bay colonnades in the composite order, and for nine bays along Lowgate. Pevsner states that it "would look convincing in an Italian city where they did their stile Vittorio Emmanuele like that". This facade faces south and in summer receives full sun for most of the day. There is lavish Edwardian Baroque detailing including numerous putti and allegorical figures; the entablatures are enriched in a manner similar to seventeenth century English work.

Fig. 3 Detail of the main order on the Alfred Gelder Street elevation

Fig. 4 The top of the campanile

The elevation of the Guildhall to Lowgate is simpler with no figurative sculpture apart from four putti supporting a globe at the top of the clock tower. This campanile like tower with a slim, unadorned middle section marks a move away from the elaborate "wedding cake" towers of the nineteenth century, with their multiple attached columns, exemplified by Broderick's Leeds Town Hall, and looks forward to the slim square towers of Percy Thomas's Swansea Civic Centre (1932) and Bradshaw Gass & Hope's Luton Town Hall (1934-8); Cooper later built a similar tower at the Westminster City Hall. However it is not the tower that is the salient feature of the Guildhall's skyline.

Fig. 5 The Daughters of Neptune seen in relation to the whole building

At either end of the great colonnade on Alfred Gelder Street the building rises into two enormous plinths on which rest two larger than life allegorical sculptures known together as the Daughters of Neptune. At the east end of the building is Strength, represented by Britannia in a chariot drawn by lions, at the west end is Maritime Prowess, who is drawn by sea horses. The sculptor was Albert H. Hodge (1875-1917), a Glaswegian who had first trained as an architect. Of the two groups it is Maritime Prowess, with its baroque sense of movement, which impresses the most.

Fig. 6 Maritime Prowess

Fig. 7 Strength

The north elevation of the Guildhall is relatively sparse but still has some fine details. This facade is only half the length of the Alfred Gelder Street elevation; the remainder of the building is tapered off, due to the shape of the site, and hidden behind a screen wall. This side of the building was originally screened by warehouses along the side of Queens Dock.

Fig. 8 The North façade

Fig. 9 A view over the screen wall of the “missing” quarter of the building, showing the brick of the internal courtyards

The interiors are generally well fitted out. The ground floor corridor from the main entrance is lit by borrowed light via glazed bronze screens between marble columns, in imitation of ancient Greek transenni. The main staircase incorporates much green marble; surprisingly it is not a double or imperial stair but a single flight with quarter landings. On the first floor the corridors are oak panelled; two lunette paintings of Hull’s mediaeval history were added above the panelling in the 1930s.

Fig. 10 The main staircase

The Banqueting Room behind the Lowgate facade is large but slightly disappointing in detail. It has a barrel-vaulted ceiling and slightly mediaeval looking woodwork, possibly to suggest the mediaeval guilds. The room was badly damaged by a bomb during World War II and restored in the 1950s with the addition of two stained glass windows commemorating the event. Adjoining the Banqueting Room is the Reception Room which is a cube with a domed ceiling; the detail here is richer with baroque swags and Corinthian pilasters.

Fig. 11 The Council Chamber

Fig. 12 The Council Chamber

The most impressive room is the Council Chamber. The chamber has a coffered dome resting on four arches which are in turn supported by four Composite columns. The lunettes beneath three of the arches are painted with allegorical figures. This room owes much to the contemporary Beaux-Arts style of France and America which fascinated Edwardian architects who felt it offered a degree of sophistication that Victorian architecture had lacked.

All in all, the Hull Guildhall is impressive, if inconsistent. There is an oscillation between provincial English and international Classical language in the building just as there is an ambiguity as to which is the buildings principal façade. If anything sticks in the mind it is the great colonnade to Alfred Gelder Street, with Hodge’s surreally large statues looming above.

Bibliography

A. Stuart Gray (1985), Edwardian Architecture - a Biographical Dictionary, ISBN 0-7156-2141-6.

Nikolaus Pevsner & David Neave, (1972, 2nd Ed. 1995), Yorkshire: York and the East Riding: The Buildings of England, ISBN 0-300-09593-7.