Queen's Hall Arts Centre

The first municipal building in the town was a 14th-century moot hall in the Market Place which was originally built as a defensive structure against the Scots and later became a courthouse for county court hearings. The petty session hearings were held in the White Hart Inn in Fore Street. In the mid-19th century, the lord of the manor, Wentworth Blackett Beaumont, proposed the removal of some old tenement buildings just to the east of the remains of the abbey wall. In response a group of local businessmen led by a local solicitor, Charles Head, formed a private company to raise the money to erect a dedicated municipal structure for the town: the old tenement buildings were demolished and…