The Friends of the Manchester Centre for Regional History are giving their final talk of the year, given by Dr John Garrard, on The Rise, Fall and Resurrection of 19th Century Town Halls.

The talk makes no great claims to originality and aims to provoke discussion as much as to provide insight. It is a bi-product of other work – on 19th century urban politics, heads of the local state, even democratisation – that I have done over the decades.

The 19th century was the golden age of town-hall building, and the results have much to tell us about the values of the people who created these buildings (and of those elsewhere who refused to do so) and of those who periodically gathered around them. Town-hall building, decoration and subsequent history both expressed and helped create civic consciousness amongst elites and citizens alike;

They provided gathering points for evermore extravagant urban ritual where self-governance could be celebrated and where the entire respectable urban social structure could put itself persuasively on display, they became loci for symbolic meetings between national and local states.

Yet, after 1918, still more 1945, town-halls went into decline alongside the sense of locality and local autonomy that they expressed to a point where some were demolished and others (like Manchester) came perilously close.

More recent decades have seen their cleaning and consequent rediscovery, permitting the acquisition of new functions, and allowing otherwise anonymous and indistinguishable urban locations to retain some sense of place. There will be lots of pictures to keep you awake.”

Free talk and refreshments on Wednesday 14th May 2014 at 6.30pm in Room 230, Geoffrey Manton Building,(Rosamond Street West, Off Oxford Road), Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester, M15 6LL All welcome.

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