St Columb Major Town Hall
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| St Columb Major Town Hall | |
|---|---|
  Location of St Columb Major Town Hall in Cornwall | |
| Location | St Columb Major, Cornwall, England |
| Coordinates | 50°26′07″N 4°56′24″W / 50.4352°N 4.9401°W |
Listed Building – Grade II* | |
| Official name | Town Hall |
| Designated | 10 February 1967 |
| Reference no. | 1144107 |
St Columb Major Town Hall is a historic building in the Market Place in St Columb Major, a town in Cornwall, in England. The building, which serves as the offices and meeting place of St Columb Major Town Council as well as a public library, is a Grade II* listed building.[1]
The current building was commissioned to replace an ancient market house, which consisted of a large room raised on arches.[2] The current building was designed in the neoclassical style, built in rubble masonry with an ashlar stone front and sides, and was completed in 1848.[1] It originally accommodated monthly meetings of the magistrates' court, the county court, and other public meetings on the first floor, while the ground floor housed the regular meat markets.[3][4][5]
In 1913, a cinema known as "The Picture Palace" started showing silent films in the town hall; it became the "Town Hall Cinema" in the late 1920s and "Neath's Non-Flam Pictures" in the 1930s, before closing as a cinema in February 1945.[6]
Since local government re-organisation in 1974,[7] it has accommodated the offices of St Columb Major Town Council and been the venue for their meetings.[8][9] The building also accommodates the local public library,[10] which, since 2018, has been managed by the town council.[11]
The annual Cornish hurling competition, which has been held on Shrove Tuesday each year for some 500 years, starts with the silver ball being thrown up in the Market Place close to the town hall, and the two teams then compete to take possession of the ball and place it in their own goal.[12][13]