Factory Night @ The Old Town Hall, Berwick-Upon-Tweed
Friday 23rd April 2010
The Berwick–upon-Tweed Old Town Hall (also known as the Guildhall) was built in 1754 using a rich brown stone in a classical design. The Old Town Hall boasts grand Tuscan Columns and a tall spire, the top floor used to be a jail and prisoners were aired on the balcony round the roof. The Town Hall is often mistaken for the Parish Church and the bell in the Town Hall was even used to summon people to the Church services at the Holy Trinity. The Berwick-upon-Tweed Old Town Hall Factory Night included a guided tour of the prison cells showing original graffiti, for the first time access to the Council Chambers (that are still in use) and access up to the bell tower to enjoy views over Berwick.
The Dark Heart of Berwick
Berwick Borough gaol was closed in 1849 and the prisoners moved to new accommodation. The old gaol was preserved as a museum, the five whitewashed cells with tar black doors, and solid wooden beds bearing the imprint of 400 years of bodies are left just as they were. A cinematic, almost completely black and white environment, the cells are also one of the venues for the Berwick Film and Media Arts festival. Visiting the prison cells during the first Festival in the late summer of 2005, the sun streaming through the windows onto the white walls and ancient wooden floorboards, screens flickering in each of the cells, the noise from various monitors hazily mingling, the place seemed to me to be flooded with a sense of lazy wellbeing entirely at odds with its turbulent past.
The Town Hall is owned by the Freemen of Berwick and houses the Guild Hall, Council Chambers where the Borough Council and Freemen meet, the Mayor’s robes, and on the second floor, the gaol. The present building was built in 1750 influenced by the same ideas that had also influenced, 25 years earlier, the design of The Church of St Martin in the Fields.
This newly designed classically influenced building that has become Berwick’s most distinguishing landmark (vaguely reminiscent of The Church of St Martin in the Fields) stands on land first bequeathed to the guild in the 13th century during the rein of Alexander III, when Berwick-upon-Tweed was Scotland’s most important town boasting a prosperous trade in wool exports. The site was marked by a mercat cross, a symbol of the King’s peace marking the place where transactions were agreed and protecting the trade of the Burgh. From the early 1500s the site has been used by the Freemen of Berwick, under ordinance of Sir Nicholas Strellie Captain of Berwick, as their council house and prison.
The gaol bore witness to both the Reformation and the Jacobite Rebellions. A list of prisoners in 1715 is predominantly made up of those found guilty of being either papists or involved in the rebellions, or both.
A report of May 1824 by The Committee of The Society for the Improvement of Prison Discipline and the reformation of Juvenile Offenders found the prison to be severely wanting. Conditions were poor and security inadequate with no resident keeper. There was no outside space and no occupation for felons. Debtors had an outside walkway but were otherwise confined with felons. Serious offenders were often shackled to the walls of the cells with irons, as security was weak in the dayroom. Male, female, young and old mingled in one dayroom, and the report found it to be of particular concern that there was no discrimination between offenders:
“Here are promiscuously associated the convicted housebreaker and the lad committed for trial, or only charged with an assault or misdemeanour; the servant maid, committed on suspicion of some petty theft, the disorderly and refractory apprentice, with the notorious pickpocket and the hardened prostitute”
On Friday 23rd of April 2010 with a similar lack of discrimination, 25 people from creative backgrounds were invited into this historic space on a first come first serve basis for a Factory Nights event. As peanuts were nibbled and spilled out of cupped hands and wine and pop consumed out of white plastic cups introductions were made and conversations hesitantly struck up. The local theatre director was seen to take the magistrates seat in the replica court, a prime vantage point from which to study his fellow creatives. A curator with a passing resemblance to an El Greco painting, discovered a flatmate of an ex flatmate from Belfast. A fly on the wall might have heard an experimental filmmaker, a painter and a percussionist discussing the Scottish witch-hunt. A photographer with a camera for a face darted silently from cell to cell collecting images. Small groups were taken in relay on an ascent from perpendicular ladder to perpendicular ladder up behind the ubiquitous clock face, past the bells balanced upside down, out onto the small balcony around the spire to survey the turbulent late April weather beating the Northumberland town and coastline. A tall Irish painter returned flushed and jubilant after this hairy climb. A slight photographer from Sunderland waited nervously at the top of one ladder reluctant to either ascend or descend. A poet attempted to brand himself with a branding iron and a dried up inkpad. An artist who made drawings and the musician from Newcastle tried out the sloping drunks’ bed, so angled to aid the flow of bodily excrements. The scientist and photographer who would soon be performing a public dissection of an octopus stooped to trace the engraved lines of the rigging of a boat carved into the wall by an 18th century inmate. A socially engaged performance artist was heard to observe that this really was the Dark Heart of Berwick.
From Mercat Cross to Town Hall, this site has been at the centre of Berwick’s affairs. What better place to climb up and take a view of not only the coastline and turbulent weather but of our changing society and turbulent times.
By Samantha Cary
Session Images
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Click here to see the film of the Berwick Factory Night, by artist Peter McAdam
Funded by: Northern Rock Foundation and Arts Council England, with thanks to the Trustees of Berwick Old Town Hall.
In collaboration with and supported by: Inspire Northumberland, Berwick upon Tweed Film & Media Arts Festival, Berwick Gymnasium Gallery, The Maltings Theatre and Arts Centre.