Piece Hall
The Piece Hall is a Grade I listed building in Halifax, West Yorkshire, England. It was built as a cloth hall for handloom weavers to sell the woollen cloth "pieces" they had produced. It opened on 1 January 1779, with 315 separate rooms arranged around a central open courtyard. As factories started up in the early nineteenth century the trade in handwoven wool declined and around 1815 the rules were changed to allow the sale of cotton goods.
The Piece Hall reopened on 1 August 2017, after a £19 million restoration project started in 2014.
An 1831 description of the Piece Hall says:
The Piece Hall was erected by the manufacturers and is a large quadrangular building of freestone occupying an area of ten thousand square yards with a rustic basement storey and two upper storeys fronted with two interior colonnades which are spacious walks leading to arched rooms where goods in an unfinished state were deposited and exhibited for sale to the merchants every Saturday from ten to twelve o clock. This structure which was completed at an expense of £12,000 and opened on 1 January 1779 unites elegance convenience and security. It contains three hundred and fifteen separate rooms and is proof against fire.
The Piece Hall closed on 16 January 2014 for redevelopment work, which has repaired and conserved the building in-keeping with its Grade-I listing, as well as installing new services. A three-storey extension has also been constructed at the south-eastern corner of the building, between the Square Church spire site and Square Chapel.
After reopening, which took place on 1 August 2017, the Piece Hall will be a centre of trade, culture and heritage – continuing a tradition stretching back well over two centuries. The 66,000-square-foot (6,100 m2) open-air piazza will be enclosed by a mix of independent bars, restaurants, shops, cafés and creative businesses. There will also be a visual arts gallery and the stories of Georgian Halifax will be told in a state-of-the-art heritage centre and interpretation spaces. The courtyard will be home to a rolling events programme that will include music concerts, film seasons, outdoor site-specific theatre and dance, sculpture, markets, ice rinks and sporting events.
The venue will be independently managed by the Piece Hall Trust, a charity responsible for realising the new vision for the Piece Hall. Its activities will "promote the conservation, protection and improvement of the environment by the preservation of the Piece Hall as a historic building and advance the education of the public in arts, sciences and history."
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