Memory, ceremony and hearing the Town Hall speak.

There is a romantic notion that if you only listen hard enough you can hear buildings speak, as if somehow voices from the past have engrained themselves in the surface materials and added richness to the patina of age. Layers of dust capture memory traces; peeling paint bears witness; discarded belongings act as clues. The newly restored Town Hall is pristine. Even the brass door handles are fingerprint free. There are two conspicuous memory triggers; the war memorials. But both have disjointed pasts. One was relocated to a leftover space at the bottom of the stairs. The other, the stained glass portrayals of Industry, Agriculture, Navigation, Peace, Justice, Vigilance and Commerce was rebranded as a war memorial retrospectively.

If the motivation of the artist residency is to reconnect people with place, then should visitors be enabled to feel at home here? This building speaks of civic formality. The sense of authority is distilled down to the micro-architectures of the ceremonial chairs. Made of red leather, brass studs and carved oak, they look uncomfortable and discourage uninvited perching. Even a past Mayor, dressed in his robes of office for his commemorative portrait, prefers to stand next to the official seat of power. Symbols of ease and domesticity would seem out of place. How would if feel to happen across an old pair of slippers beneath one of these chairs?

Apparently in the 1850’s the Town Hall was brought close to bankruptcy as rival factions fought over the dwindling tourist revenues by constructing competing piers to gain control over the river borne arrivals. As the day-trippers defected to Margate on the newly opened railways, the official regalia, chain, mace, wig and robes, ended up in hock. Although they were eventually retrieved by the next generation of Councillors, for a while they had to be rented back for official functions. Where would Victorian authority be without the symbols of ceremony after all? As the doors open on this newly restored Victorian civic space, it begs the question, how can it speak now to a new wave of visitors?
Lucy