Sir William Codrington and Tewkesbury Town Hall

Photo by Peter Foster

IRON PLAQUE INSCRIPTION
 
TOWN HALL
Anticipating the visit of King George III, Tewkesbury’s town hall was built in 1788 with a loan from the then M.P., Sir William Codrington, so contributing to the council’s 1828 insolvency. Set back, with a cobbled corn exchange in front, it housed a court room and banqueting hall. Later a fire station and a police station with cells were incorporated. The corn exchange was roofed and a stone frontage was built, funded by the local wealthy miller, Samuel Healing. The clock is flanked by figures of an agricultural worker and Ceres, goddess of agriculture. The building now houses Tewkesbury Town Council.
TEWKESBURY CIVIC SOCIETY

Location: Tewkesbury Town Hall

By Sarah Crowe

The inscription on William Codrington’s iron plaque on Tewkesbury Town Hall appears to hold him responsible for the bankruptcy of the Tewkesbury council. The plaque reads:

Anticipating the visit of King George III, Tewkesbury town hall was built in 1788 with a loan (my emphasis) from the then M.P. Sir William Codrington, so contributing to the council’s 1828 insolvency.1

Tourist Plaques, Tewkesbury Historical Society.

This wording has proven contentious, begging the question as to why this was made his permanent legacy. For example, an article in the Gloucester Journal from October 1788 states that Tewkesbury “Common Council” gave thanks “to Sir William Codrington, Bart. one of the principal Burgesses of this Borough, for the elegant and commodious Town-Hall which he has erected within this Borough.”2 Another article, also in the Journal, reported on a meeting in Tewkesbury in 1785 (three years before the Town Hall was completed), which had been called to discuss various matters pertaining to the town such as street lighting and street repairs.3 At the meeting, a representative of Sir William Codrington stated that the MP “was willing and desirous to build a Town Hall at his own expense,” which clearly goes directly against the wording on his plaque in two ways.4 Firstly, it is explicitly stated that he wished to build it at his own expense, rather than loaning the funds to the council, and secondly, it is very unlikely that a visit by the King was being planned three years in advance, and that the building was being erected as part of a general improvement programme for the town, rather than in anticipation of a visit from the King.

Indeed, in their paper A History Set in Iron? A Revision of the History of Tewkesbury’s Town Hall, 1788-1857, John Dixon, Wendy Snarey, and Joanne Raywood suggest that elements of the wording on Codrington’s Town Hall memorial are in all likelihood inaccurate, and in need of re-wording. They quote local council minutes from 1788 (the year the Town Hall was completed), which state “an elegant and commodious edifice was erected by Sir William Codrington Bart., then M.P. for the Borough at a cost of £1,000,” which appears to have been “not a loan of £1,200 but a Gift.”5 Regarding the wording on the plaque, they go on to suggest “one should, therefore, rewrite: a gift of £1,000 from the then MP, Sir William Codrington.”6 They continue, with regards to the present wording and quoting from it, “‘Contributing to the council’s 1828 insolvency:’ if it was a loan is that the case? If it was a gift what caused the insolvency? As it was a gift, this can be omitted.”7 The authors of the paper, therefore,

accept that Codrington gave the money to the Borough so the fact that the Corporation was almost bankrupt in the 1820s was not due to this non-existent loan. The near bankruptcy was caused, not by the cost of the Town Hall, but by the problem of the Old Corporation living beyond its means, as indeed were many such councils.8

J. Dixon, W. Snarey, and J. Raywood, A History Set in Iron?

They suggest the following change, “Tewkesbury’s Town Hall was built in 1788 with a gift from the then M.P., Sir William Codrington.”9 However, although Codrington’s “gift” of the Town Hall to Tewkesbury is in all likelihood recorded inaccurately and unfairly on his memorial plaque, the MP’s considerable family wealth came about, ultimately, from the profits garnered from estates and enslaved people owned by them in the West Indies, and it was this family fortune, which directly funded the building of Tewkesbury Town Hall.

Despite this being such a major and important project for the town of Tewkesbury, there were surprisingly few mentions in the contemporary press about the building and completion of the Town Hall and seemingly very little fanfare. Ultimately, as with All Souls College, Oxford and Codrington College discussed above, Tewkesbury Town Hall, along with many other structures and monuments constructed at this time, have been demonstrated to have come about through the proceeds of problematical legacies. It is now crucial to address this and examine them with a modern lens.

  1. Tourist Plaques, Tewkesbury Historical Society, <https://tewkesburyhistory.org/Tourist-Plaques>
    [accessed 24/4/2025]. ↩︎
  2. Gloucester Journal, 13 October 1788, p. 2,
    <https://www.newspapers.com/image/971516495/?match=1&clipping_id=169842920> [accessed 24/4/2025]. These “resolutions were unanimously voted, and ordered to be inserted in the Gloucester and Worcester Journals” by fellow “Tewkesbury Project researched individual “H. Fowke, Town Clerk.” ↩︎
  3. 151 – Gloucester Journal, 25 July 1785, p. 3,
    <https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0000532/17850725/003/0003> [accessed 24/4/2025]. ↩︎
  4. ibid. ↩︎
  5. J. Dixon, W. Snarey, and J. Raywood, A History Set in Iron?,
    <https://tewkesburyhistory.org/docs/History-of-Town-Hall.pdf> [accessed 24/4/2025]. ↩︎
  6. ibid. ↩︎
  7. ibid. ↩︎
  8. ibid. ↩︎
  9. ibid. This is a very detailed document about the history of the Town Hall which also chronicles the actual insolvency of Tewkesbury council and the real reasons for it – it was, essentially, living beyond its means, as were many such councils at this time. They continue “this all helps explain why the 1835 Municipal Corporations Act was necessary. This Act reformed local government in all the incorporated boroughs of England and Wales. The legislation was part of the reform programme of the Whigs and followed the Reform Act 1832, which had abolished most of the ‘Rotten Boroughs’ for parliamentary purposes. Tewkesbury was such a ‘Rotten Borough,’ electing two aristocratic MPs; this did not change until 1868.” ↩︎