Temperance Hall, Smith Street, Rochdale

OPENING OF A NEW TEMPERANCE HALL - The members of the Temperance Society have recently erected a plain and suitable hall in Smith-street. It immediately adjoins the present Council rooms and the Primitive Methodist Chapel, is within a stone's throw of Milton Church, and within an easy distance of the Public Hall. The hall, as we have already hinted, though very plain, the limited means of the society having been spent on the useful rather than the ornamental. will be found suitable not only for the meeting of the society, but for ward and club meetings, for private festive gatherings, and for auction sales. Its erection has been promoted chiefly by working men, who until recently assembled in the hall in St. Mary's Gate. That, building, however. has been sold to the Equitable Pioneers' Co-operative Society, who propose to erect upon that site and the site of other buildings a magnificent block of warehouses and shops for their own exclusive use. The Temperance Society being served with but very short notice to quit, experienced great difficulty in meeting with premises suitable for their use within their means of support, and this led them to entertain the idea of putting up a building of their own. a course which they felt to be pressed upon them as a necessity. They accordingly amongst themselves commenced the preliminary steps, and declined to seek the aid of the public. An insuperable difficulty to a public appeal. An insuperable difficulty was found in the fact that some five years ago the members of a district temperance society in the town had begun to build, and though they had received several munificent subscriptions from the general public they were not able to finish. The then projected temperance hall in Blackwater Street being afterwards sold and altered, is now used for warehouses. It was thought, and justly so, that the public would not again be disposed to invest any money in an enterprise which might, after all, prove visionary, and it was wisely decided at that time to confine the solicitation of subscriptions to their own members, or at any rate to their own adherents and friends, and if, when the building was erected, the amount they had raised did not cover the cost, to mortgage the building for the remaining sum. A building committee was at once appointed, of which Messrs Whattnough and Clough have been active members. The committee, to enable them to proceed so that they should not go beyond the outlay which they proposed—that of between four and five hundred pounds—called in Mr. E. N. Macdougall, architect, from whose plans and under whose superintendence the edifice has been erected. It consists of a room with raised dais, and is capable of comfortably seating 500 persons, care having been taken to provide in the arrangement all the ingress and egress room that the nature of the ground will allow. The committee room is constructed under the dais, and has slide doors to pass through the tea and urns on jubilee days, thus preventing confusion. The building has the usual conveniences behind, and the interior, although a mere shed, has a very light and airy appearance, and has been found a good room for speaking in. It is proposed, when the funds will permit, to decorate and finish it. Externally there is nothing more than the four brick walls, with just sufficient adjustment of the bricks to give the building character and relief. The building has been erected in a suitable manner by Mr. John Parker, joiner and builder, of Molesworth Street. [Rochdale Observer 30 June 1866 page 5].

 Reference           Rochdale Observer 30 June 1866 page 5 – opening