St George's Hall is a building on St George's Place, opposite Lime Street railway station in the centre of Liverpool, England. Opened in 1854, it is a Neoclassical building which contains concert halls and law courts, and is recorded in the National Heritage List for England as a designated Grade I listed building. On the east side of the hall, between it and the railway station, is St George's Plateau and on the west side are St John's Gardens. The hall is included in the William Brown Street conservation area.

In 1969 the architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner expressed his opinion that it is one of the finest neo-Grecian buildings in the world,Quoted in although the building is known for its use of Roman sources as well as Greek. In 2004, the hall and its surrounding area were recognised as part of Liverpool's World Heritage Site until its revocation of World Heritage status in 2021. The Liverpool Register Office and Coroner's Court have been based in the hall since 2012.

History The site of the hall was formerly occupied by the first Liverpool Infirmary from 1749 to 1824. Triennial music festivals were held in the city but there was no suitable hall to accommodate them. Following a public meeting in 1836 a company was formed to raise subscriptions for a hall in Liverpool to be used for the festivals, and for meetings, dinners and concerts. Shares were made available at £25 each and by January 1837 £23,350 () had been raised. In 1838 the foundation stone was laid to commemorate the coronation of Queen Victoria.

A competition was announced on 5 March 1839 via an advertisement in The Times to design the hall, first prize was 250 guineas, second prize 150 guineas. By July more than eighty entries had been received, and the competition was won by Harvey Lonsdale Elmes, a London architect aged 25 years, the second prize went to George Alexander of London. The requirement was: "There is to be accommodation in the main hall for 3000 persons; and there is also to be a concert room, capable of accommodating 1000 persons, applicable to other purposes such as lectures and smaller meetings....the cost of the building will be £35,000"

There was a need for assize courts in the city and a competition to design these with first prize £300 and second prize £200 was announced. There were eighty-six entries and it was also won by Elmes. The original plan was to have separate buildings but in 1840 Elmes suggested that both functions could be combined in one building on a scale which would surpass most of the public buildings in the country at the time. Construction started in 1841 and the building opened in 1854 (with the small concert room opening two years later). "How frequently I observe the great & true end & aim of Art entirely lost sight of in the discussion of some insignificant detail or quaint Antiquarianism. Bold and original conceptions never can find favour while so much stress is laid upon precedent" Harvey Lonsdale Elmes in a letter to Robert Rawlinson.

Elmes died in 1847 and the work was continued by John Weightman, Corporation Surveyor, and Robert Rawlinson, structural engineer, until in 1851 Charles Cockerell was appointed architect. Cockerell was largely responsible for the decoration of the interiors. The eventual cost of the building exceeded £300,000 (roughly equivalent to £33,000,000 in 2019). Following the implementation of the Courts Act 1971, the former assizes court was re-designated Liverpool Crown Court.Courts Act 1971 (Commencement) Order 1971 (SI 1971/1151) The Crown Court moved to the new Law Courts in Derby Square in 1984.

During the 2000s a major restoration of the hall took place costing £23m and it was officially reopened on 23 April 2007 by Prince Charles. The magnificent sculpture of the exterior was by William Grinsell Nicholl.Dictionary of British Sculptors 1660-1851 by Rupert Gunnis

Structure

Plan

The Great Hall (also known as the Concert Hall) is the largest room, rectangular in shape, and occupies the centre of the building with an organ on its north wall. Two long corridors flank the east and west walls of the Great Hall. To the north of the Concert Hall is the Civil Court and beyond this is the North Entrance Hall; above this, reached by two staircases, is the elliptical Small Concert Room. To the south of the Great Hall is the Crown Court, beyond this is the South Entrance Hall above which reached by two staircases is the Grand Jury Room. In the middle of the west front is the Law Library, to the north of this is the Vice-Chancellor's Court, to the south of the Law Library is the Sheriff's Court. The floor below consists of a cavernous basement with cells for prisoners along the west wall.

Exterior The main entrance is in the centre of the east façade and is approached by a wide flight of steps. On the steps is a statue of Benjamin Disraeli by Charles Bell Birch, moved here to make way for Liverpool's cenotaph. At the south-east corner is a bronze statue of Major-General William Earle by the same sculptor. This front has a central portico of 16 Corinthian columns flanked on each side by series of square, unfluted columns, between which are reliefs that were added between 1882 and 1901 by Thomas Stirling Lee, C. J. Allen and Conrad Dressler. The west front has a projecting central part with square columns supporting a large entablature. The north front has a semicircular apse with columns and three doorways that are flanked by statues of nereids or tritons bearing a cornucopia with lamps attached, the central doors on the south and east fronts have similar statues, and were sculpted by William Nicholl.

The south front has an octastyle portico (eight columns wide), two columns deep, on steps above a rusticated podium. On the south portico entablature is a classical Latin inscription using V where U would now be used, that reads ‘ARTIBVS LEGIBVS CONSILIIS LOCVM MVNICIPES CONSTITVERVNT ANNO DOMINI MDCCCXLI’ (For Arts, Law and Counsel the townspeople built this place in 1841).

The tympanum in the pediment above the south portico once contained sculptures of Britannia enthroned at the centre protecting agriculture and the arts and offering an olive branch to the four quarters of the globe, carved by William Nicholl;

The completed sculpture has the following written description:

These sculptures were removed for safety's sake in 1950 (the sculptures having become unsafe due to erosion by atmospheric pollution), and subsequently lost, reputedly turned into hardcore.

Interior

The main entrance crosses a corridor and leads into the Great Hall. This measures by and is high. The inspiration for the Great Hall are the Baths of Caracalla. The roof is a tunnel vault, built of hollow brick was designed by Robert Rawlinson completed 1849, it is carried on eight columns, in height, of polished red Cairngall granite, these reduce the span to , the spandrels contain allegorical plaster work angels, twelve in total, designed by Cockerell, representing fortitude, prudence, science, art, justice and temperance etc. The vault also decorated with plaster work by Cockerell, contains coffering, the centres of the main coffers have coat of arms of Liverpool, or the coats of arms of Lancashire or St George and the dragon, in the centre of the vault are the Royal Arms used by Queen Victoria this is above a matching coat of arms in the Minton floor. The walls have niches for statues. The highly decorated floor consists of Minton encaustic tile and it is usually covered by a removable floor to protect it. It contains over 30,000 tiles. The doors are bronze and have openwork panels which incorporate the letters SPQL (the Senate and the People of Liverpool) making an association with the SPQR badge of ancient Rome. The ten brass and bronze chandeliers in the Great Hall, designed by Cockerell, originally powered by town gas weigh 15 cwt, are decorated with prows of ships, heads of Neptune and Liver birds.

The organ is at the north end and at the south end is a round arch supporting an entablature between whose columns is a gate leading directly into the Crown Court. The niches contain the statues of William Roscoe by Chantrey, Sir William Brown by Patrick MacDowell, Robert Peel by Matthew Noble, George Stephenson by John Gibson, Hugh Boyd M‘Neile by George Gamon Adams, Edward Whitley by A. Bruce Joy, Samuel Robert Graves by G. G. Fontana, Rev. Jonathan Brooks by Benjamin Edward Spence, William Ewart Gladstone by John Adams-Acton, the 14th Earl of Derby by William Theed the Younger, the 16th Earl of Derby by F. W. Pomeroy, and Joseph Mayer by Fontana. In 2012 a statue of Kitty Wilkinson by Simon Smith was unveiled, the first in 101 years, and the first of a woman. The stained glass in the semicircular windows at each end of the hall was added in 1883–84 by Forrest and Son of Liverpool. Sharples and Pollard regard this as "one of the greatest Victorian interiors".

The Crown Court has a tunnel vault on red granite columns and the Civil Court a coved ceiling on grey granite columns. The South Entrance Hall is approached through the portico, is low and has Ionic columns. Below this is a larger vaulted space which was adapted to form a new entrance in 2003–05. The North Entrance Hall has Doric columns on its landing and a Doric ambulatory around the apse with two bronze Torchères by Messengers of Birmingham decorated with allegorical scenes, the apse contains stairs, unlike the other main entrances where the stairs are external. A copy in plaster of part of the Parthenon frieze runs round its walls. In the centre of the south wall is a marble statue of Henry Booth shown standing up, carved 1874 by William Theed the Younger, placed here in 1877, flanking the statue are sculptures of caryatids.

The Small Concert Room designed by Charles Robert Cockerell and completed in 1856, is elliptical measuring by , when built it had a capacity for 1,100 people, the stage is by , and is lavishly decorated. In the past it was known as the Golden Concert Room. A balcony supported by caryatids runs round the room. At the back of the platform are attached columns, decorated with arabesques, supporting a frieze with griffins and between the columns are mirrors. The concert room was refurbished between 2000 and 2007. This included making alterations to comply with the Disability Discrimination Act, restoring the historical painting scheme and restoring the chandelier, which consists of 2,824 crystal pieces. It has seating for an audience of 480.

Ventilation and heating of the building

In the basement is part of a unique heating and ventilation system devised by Dr Boswell Reid. This was the first attempt at providing air conditioning in a public building in the United Kingdom, its aim being to warm and ventilate the building without draughts. Air drawn in via two shafts at either end of the eastern portico was warmed by five hot water pipes, that were heated by two coke-fired boilers and two steam boilers, these latter two were only used in extremely cold weather. The air was circulated by four fans wide driven by a 10 horsepower steam engine. In hot weather the air was cooled using cold mains water, small fountains in the air shafts cooling the incoming air. The air from the system entered the Great Hall via grilles at the back of the sculpture niches and in the risers of the seating tiers in the Small Concert Hall, stale air was drawn out through grilles in the ceilings. The air flow was controlled by a large number of workers opening and closing a series of canvas flaps via ropes and pulleys, though the court rooms had valves beneath the benches that could be controlled by the occupants. The system treated different parts of the building as zones allowing separate heating. In 2005 the Heritage Group of the Chartered Institution of Building Services Engineers awarded its first Blue Plaque to St George's Hall recognising it as the World's First Air Conditioned Building.