The Old William Adams Town Hall
Last year we were pleased again to have access to and digitise an engraving from Caroline Cross’s archives at Davies White & Perry. Here we have an engraving created and printed by Adnitt & Naunton whose business was based at The Square Shrewsbury. Newport History Society have come across versions of this picture but have not seen an original engraving before. We were therefore very pleased when Caroline agreed that we could copy it to our Newport SNAP Project, which for people who dont know is a project to digitise all images of Newport both past and present.
The engraving is by Adnitt & Naunton, whose names appear in the left hand corner. It seems their business started in 1872 and they were engravers and printers. Henry William Adnitt was very much involved with the Shropshire Archaeological and Natural History Society being their librarian. The company survived until 1978 when at the retirement of the general manager, Frank Lycett, the business closed .
Newport old town hall was built as part of a bequest through the will of Newport’s William Adams, who also founded Haberdashers Adams Grammar School, and who gave £550 towards this town hall. Inside there was a corn market. A general market was held on Saturdays. Above was a large room which held petty session and county courts.
In this engraving we see to the left, in the distance, the Butter Cross market . This encapsulated a cross erected for the soul of Roger de Puleston who fought with king against the Welsh. The cross is still there today.
Here we see an image of the market in 1850s. The important people of the town decided that they wished the town hall and market be moved to the side of the High Street, with the market behind the town hall. You can see that on market day, the High Street became a quagmire of dirt, and it is no surpise that these peope decided to demolish both the town hall and the butter market.
The new town hall opened late in 1859, and we assume soon afterwards the town hall and butter market were demolished.