University of Bath PHD Architecture, power and ritual in Scottish town halls, 1833-1973 O'Connor, Susan Award date: 2017 Awarding institution: University of Bath Link to publication Alternative formats If you require this document in an alternative format, please contact: [email protected] General rights Copyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. • Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the public portal for the purpose of private study or research. • You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain • You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the public portal ? Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Download date: 11. Oct. 2021 Architecture, Power and Ritual in Scottish Town Halls, 1833-1973 Susan O’Connor A thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Bath Department of Architecture and Civil Engineering June 2016 COPYRIGHT Attention is drawn to the fact that copyright of this thesis rests with the author. A copy of this thesis has been supplied on condition that anyone who consults it is understood to recognise that its copyright rests with the author and that they must not copy it or use material from it except as permitted by law or with the consent of the author. This thesis may be made available for consultation within the University Library and may be photocopied or lent to other libraries for the purposes of consultation with effect from………………. Signed on behalf of the Department of Architecture and Civil Engineering Table of Contents Page Number Acknowledgements 1 Abstract 2 Chapter 1: Introduction and Survey 3 Chapter 2: The Town Hall as a Civic Space: Changes 54 in Access and Administration Chapter 3: Building Expressions of Power 107 Chapter 4: The Use of History In Creating the Image 139 of Local Government Chapter 5: The Town Hall and Civic Ritual: 183 Performance and Place Chapter 6: Conclusions 236 Appendix: Scottish Town Halls, 1833-1973 244 Bibliography Acknowledgements My sincere thanks to the librarians and archivists of Burntisland Heritage Trust, Dundee City Archive, Fife Archive, Paisley Local History Library and South Lanarkshire Council Archive, for their generous help and assistance while researching this thesis. Thanks also to the Council Officers of Dundee City Council, Fife Council Renfrewshire Council, and South Lanarkshire Council, for giving me guided tours of their town halls, and providing much anecdotal evidence for understanding the history of their buildings. My supervisor Dr Robert Proctor has provided structure and contextual guidance, but most importantly, asked the bigger questions and continuously directed me towards a better thesis. I am hugely grateful to him for his unflagging support and generosity with his time. This thesis would not have been possible without my husband Matthew Magee’s encouragement, kind words and endless willingness to let me keep talking about town halls. He has let me find the time to pursue this research within our busy family life, with a thoughtfulness and grace I can only aspire to. 1 Abstract Town halls are the key expression of civic consciousness in the urban environment. They were constructed at a period of change for local government, when there was an urgent need for transition to an altered method of control. They enable a degree of civic access and ritual, and encapsulate important messages of local culture and heritage, in an effort to appropriate them to boost the legitimacy of the political process. The change expressed by their building can be read as a microcosm of the town; and from the town, the city and country: the majority of concerns and triumphs expressed at local level echoed those being voiced nationally, tracking flux in the narrative of social and political history. This research shows that the town hall provides the resolution of local authority change: it is a static statement of a great political transformation, easing the passage of a local authority’s development from a point of weakness and uncertainty to a position of strength. For this transition to be managed effectively, the ability of the town hall to express power is vital. This power is expressed through a broad range of source materials, including local and national sources of culture and history, and latterly, international inspiration as well. The function of the town hall’s architecture as a civic space designed for social ritual changed dramatically during the period studied, from making public involvement the design’s key driver in nineteenth century designs, to their relegation to external gathering spaces in the twentieth century. The social history of a locality was a frequent tool in the legitimisation of town halls – an effect heightened by the numerous strategies employed by their municipal designers to inculcate the suggestion of power within their construction. These could include the inclusion of redundant but impressive features, widespread demolition or the use of a culturally-significant location. This thesis describes how the narratives of power, ritual and civic access, drawn out during the construction of town halls, mirror those of contemporary society. It addresses the question of the role of town halls for urban society, and how they serve as monuments to distinct periods in the development of urban civilisation. 2 Chapter 1: Introduction and Survey Contents 1 Introduction ........................................................................................ 4 2 Existing Research ................................................................................ 6 3 Scope .............................................................................................. 12 4 Historic Context ................................................................................. 14 4.1 Local Government ....................................................................... 14 4.2 Scottish and the Centre: Political Context ....................................... 17 4.3 The Scottishness of Scottish Town Halls ......................................... 19 4.4 Social Change ............................................................................. 22 5 Survey ............................................................................................. 25 5.1 Methodology ............................................................................... 26 5.2 Statistical Analysis ....................................................................... 27 6 Key Buildings .................................................................................... 39 7 Themes ............................................................................................ 47 3 1 Introduction The town hall encapsulates the gradual change in the location of governmental power over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, from highly localised urban centres to central government. Such buildings represent the extent of civic power in a town, acting as a manifestation of a much greater power aspired to by the Council in creating a building of great size and multiple redundancies of form, and reflecting the contestation of this power by the local citizens, who are subject to the decisions made therein. They enable a degree of civic access and ritual - subject to varying levels of enclosure - and encapsulate key messages of local culture and heritage in an effort to appropriate them to boost the legitimacy of the political process. Town halls in Scotland have not been the subject of thematic study to date, creating a gap in our understanding of the purpose and function of this key civic institution. This research aims to answer the question of their changing role in the urban environment, and in doing so, stimulate an understanding of their importance in embodying the rise and fall of the power of local government over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The following research examines in detail how the fluctuation in power is determined by the functioning of the town hall in a series of key respects: Its operation as a civic space, in defining access to local politics, and upon occasion, societal events; Its facilitation of the change in focus of local government, from urban politics to the administration of central government strategies; As an expression of power over the urban citizen, and often, the region; The provision of a channel for the interpretation of history towards the creation of a local civic narrative; or alternatively abandoning local history entirely, to promote a forward-focussed form of civic narrative; and The performance of dynamic rituals centered on the town hall, involving the appropriation of the legitimacy of other buildings, forms and spaces, with the goal of redefining the physicality of the civic in urban space. These themes are examined in depth through six case studies of town halls in Scotland, drawn from the period of 1833-1973. The one hundred and forty years to 1973 saw immense change in the laws governing the nature of relations 4 between central and local government. Between 1833 and 1973, governing locally