Blue Flash Music Trust

Tinted photo of the Horsham Town Hall taken about 1900

There has been a public building on the site of the Horsham Town Hall for the past six hundred years. At one time it would have been a wooden building with closed quarters on the first floor, and an open area on the ground floor for markets or for storage purposes.

There have been many rebuilds. In Shakespeare’s time the Town Hall was built in stone, and in 1720 the Ingram and Eversfield families had it rebuilt in portland stone and gifted it to the people of Horsham.
   Unfortunately the rebuilds proved to be of not such great quality, so in 1812 it was rebuilt in sandstone by the then Duke of Norfolk.  However, the roof let in so much rain, that the judges became convinced that the floor would give way under them. Then in 1888 came the final big building phase, which is what makes up the Town Hall as it stands today. The only part that dates from 1812 to survive the rebuilding of 1888 is the front.

   The hall has been used for many different and varied purposes over hundreds of years; as a bank, concert venue, theatre, market, meetings, courts etc.

Page contents; history, acoustics, top room, other features.

The barn at Waterperry gardens, above, is kind of building that would have been familiar to Catherine Howard when she lived at Chesworth.

Drawing of the Town Hall, in about 1750

Drawing of the hall 27th August 1860

Historical interest; the original holding cells in the basement.

Dramatic potentials as this photo shows when the Christmas TV advert was made for Argos in 2005.

Gary Holder (double bass) has played in the Town Hall on a number of occasions;

  ‘The Horsham Town Hall has great acoustics and is ideal for live acoustic music or speech. Not another penny need be spent to improve on this. The beams I talked about are probably responsible for the quality of the sound. Normally in a large square area surrounded with high walls and ceilings you get a great deal of echo, but in the Horsham Town Hall what you have is a good quality, natural sound, which in my opinion puts the hall among the best venues in the whole town for live performance. I believe the blocks that run across the ceiling break up the reflection of the sound, blocking and redirecting it which stops the echo. No doubt the drapes at the tall windows also help. The main advantage of those great windows is the quality of light they provide. The venue has everything a great venue should have, good location, good facilities, top quality acoustics and good natural lighting by day. It's all there in a nut-shell.’

The Trust discovered (6 July 06) that Dr John Stoddart carried out an initial assessment of the acoustics of the Town Hall for the council (September 2005), which confirmed the suitability of the Town Hall for 'speech and chamber music.'

‘The Town Hall according to tradition was given to the town by the Eversfield family.’   W Albery (A Millennium of Facts).

   In 1974 the hall lost its way as it was no longer considered necessary for the purposes of local government. Then in 2003 one of the members of the Trust realized it had great acoustics. With that realization the Trust obtained the first ever public entertainment licence on the building, which gave many people the chance to enjoy the acoustics.