Our magnificent Town Hall is certainly the centrepiece for ‘Christmas in the Highlands’ on Friday November 29, and for the 23rd year it is the venue for the Red Cross Community Christmas Tree displays.
The Hall has hosted performances by Dame Nellie Melba, Noella Cornish, school frolics, drill nights for the Volunteer Defence Corp, grand balls, weddings, troop home coming celebrations, Baby Shows, film nights, Macca, The Wiggles….
It provided the stage for Mrs Mackenzie’s early Musical Society shows and later the Glen Innes Arts Council, until 1984 when they produced My Fair Lady as the grand opening show in their new ‘Chapel Theatre’, the re-designed former Methodist Church.
Deniliquin architect Frederick Harrison’s design was chosen from 14 others.
What resulted has been described as a highlight of the ‘boom period’ French Renaissance /Italianate hybrid architectural style, and a loan had to be sought to proceed with the building.
Frederick Harrison of Deniliquin designed it, and local builder Henry Kendrick won the job with a tender of £2,975, and George F Nott attended to the brickwork – it remains a monument to its builders.
Local artist, portrait painter and photographer, Conrad Wagner was contracted to paint the building, £27/4/10 and the original Palings grand piano cost £110.
Whilst the new hall was being built the Council business of the Town Clerk, Inspectors, Overseer of Works, and Clerk of Works had to be carried out in a skimpy room 10 feet by 12 feet. That room was also used for Council meetings.
Henry Parkes laid the foundation stone, and the building was officially opened in November 1888.
Although a stage was in the original plan, the splendid proscenium feature was not and only added later for theatrical and musical performances, after the Music Halls at Tattersalls and the Commercial Hotel had burnt. (The Commercial Hotel was re-built and renamed as the Imperial.)
The gun in the photo, in the front was a war trophy captured by the 33rd Battalion of the AIF at East Villers Bretonneux in the early stages of the advance in August 1918. Such guns had been given to various towns but were retrieved by the government during World War II to be recycled into ‘more modern weapons’.
The elk’s head on the front of the building is the symbol for the ‘Ancient Order of Foresters’ – a Friendly Society operating in the early days, that met in the Town Hall.
