Ever wondered about the rather splendid looking building that stands in the middle of Westbury Market Place?
With its neo classical appearance complete with pillars and heraldic coat of arms, it might seem an unusual venue for a takeaway, but it has a fascinating history, spiced up with tales of fortunes made from West Indies sugar, corruption and criminals!
This stately building was constructed in 1815. It was a gift to the town by Sir Manasseh Massey Lopes who had bought Westbury five years earlier from a cash strapped Earl of Abingdon. The purchase meant Lopes, whose fortune came from sugar plantations owned by his family in Jamaica, controlled just who would become the town’s two representatives in parliament…corruption was then rife in elections with the town’s very few eligible voters often bribed with cash or jobs.
When it opened, the building, designed by architect Richard Ingleman who was also responsible for the prisons at Devizes and Fisherton Anger, had an assembly room on the first floor while the ground floor had open arcades so that markets could be held here. In fact, the town had previously had a wool/market hall which was demolished to make way for this new building.
And should you forget just who funded this edifice with its Doric columns, you need only to look up. At roof level there is the Lopes coat of arms and a frieze inscribed with the words “Built by Sir Massey Lopes Baronet, Recorder of this Borough, Anno Domini MDCCCXV”.
In the 19th century, the building was used as a market hall, as a place for civic meetings and as a venue for courts, licensing hearings and inquests. There were cells on the ground floor and when the building was refurbished in 1972, rings could still be seen in the walls where prisoners had been chained. Among court cases heard here was that of millowner James Harrup in 1863 whose workers at Boyers mill had gone on strike over the introduction of draconic timekeeping rules. He won his case but was very unpopular and left the court “amid a volley of groans, hooting, hissing, yelling and discordant noises”.
The building continued to have a range of uses from housing the town library on the first floor from 1947 to 1970 and being used for billets during the Second World War. Later, following extensive restoration, the open arcades on the ground floor were filled in and the building had a new life as shops, offices and restaurants. In 1921, the town’s war memorial was erected outside the front of the building only to be demolished in the 1970s to make way for car parking.
Sally Hendry
