Talgarth Town Hall

In the mid-1870s, a group of local landowners led by Francis William Alexander Roche, whose seat was at Tregunter Park and who had led various initiatives to promote Talgarth as a market town, decided to commission a market hall for the town. The site they selected was made available by Bertram Ashburnham, 4th Earl of Ashburnham, whose seat was at Pembrey House, on a 99-year lease at a nominal rent.^[2][3]

The foundation stone for the new building was laid by Roche on 17 July 1877.^[4] It was designed by Thomas Lawrence Lewis of Swansea in the neoclassical style, built by James Webb of Hay-on-Wye in rubble masonry at a cost of £700 and was completed in 1878.^[3][5] The design involved a symmetrical main frontage with three bays facing onto the corner of Hay Road and The Bank; there was a round headed opening with voussoirs and a wrought iron gate in the central bay on the ground floor, three segmental headed windows with voussoirs on the first floor and a central oculus in the gable above. The structure was surmounted by a quarter-hipped roof. Internally, the principal rooms were the market hall on the ground floor and the assembly room on the first floor.^[1]

A central clock turret with an ogee-shaped dome and a finial was installed as part of the celebrations for the Golden Jubilee of Queen Victoria in 1887.^[1] Following implementation of the Local Government Act 1894, which established parish councils in rural areas, a parish council was formed in Talgarth with its offices in the town hall.^[6] In August 1918, at the start of the First World War, a recruiting event was held in the town hall: 20 young men immediately enlisted.^[7] In the early 1920s, a brass plaque commemorating the lives of local service personnel who had died in the war was unveiled in the town hall; in 1957, in a "gesture of reverence" the brass plaque was buried under the town's stone war memorial in Bronllys Road.^[8]

In August 1958, the town hall was the venue for a lecture given by the nuclear physicist, John H. Fremlin, about the level of contamination by Strontium-90 in the area, during which he encouraged farmers to check the level of radioactivity in their cattle.^[9] Following implementation of the Local Government Act 1972, the parish council evolved to become Talgarth Town Council but continued to use the building as its meeting place.^[10]

Service wings, which had been added to the east side of the building, were remodelled in 1994,^[1] and the brass war memorial plaque, which had been buried under the stone war memorial in Bronllys Road was recovered and returned to the town hall in 2016.^[8] Another plaque, intended to commemorate the gold medal won by the locally-born table tennis player, Rob Davies, at the 2016 Summer Paralympics, was unveiled in the town hall in November 2016.^[11]