page_title: Liverpool Town Hall
section_title: Ground floor
hierarchical_section_title: Liverpool Town Hall / Architecture / Interior / Ground floor
caption_attribution_description: Nrf: Liverpool
context_page_description: Liverpool Town Hall stands in High Street at its junction with Dale Street, Castle Street, and Water Street in Liverpool, Merseyside, England. It is recorded in the National Heritage List for England as a designated Grade I listed building, and described in the list as "one of the finest surviving 18th-century town halls". The authors of the Buildings of England series refer to its "magnificent scale", and consider it to be "probably the grandest ...suite of civic rooms in the country", and "an outstanding and complete example of late Georgian decoration".
  It is not an administrative building but a civic suite, Lord Mayor's parlour and Council chamber; local government administration is centred at the nearby Municipal Buildings. The town hall was built between 1749 and 1754 to a design by John Wood the Elder replacing an earlier town hall nearby. An extension to the north designed by James Wyatt was added in 1785. Following a fire in 1795 the hall was largely rebuilt and a dome designed by Wyatt was built. Minor alterations have subsequently been made.
context_section_description: The main door in the south face leads to the Vestibule or Entrance Hall. It has a floor of encaustic tiles which include depictions of the arms of Liverpool and the liver bird.
   The room is panelled and on the east side is a large wooden fireplace containing 17th century Flemish carvings. It has a groin-vaulted ceiling, and in the lunettes are murals painted in 1909 by J.H. Amschewitz, depicting events in Liverpool's history; King John creating Liverpool a free port (west wall); Industry and Peace (North Wall); Liverpool the centre of commerce (east wall); Education and Progress (South wall).   Below these are brass tablets containing the names of the freemen of Liverpool. Also in the entrance hall are bardic chairs from the two Eisteddfods held in the city.
  At the rear of the ground floor in Wyatt's extension is the Council Chamber. This has mahogany-panelled walls and can seat 160 people.  Adjacent to the Council Chamber is the Hall of Remembrance. On its wall are panels bearing the names of the military men who lost their lives in the First World War, and eight murals painted by Frank O. Salisbury in 1923.
  In the centre of the ground floor is the Staircase Hall described in the Buildings of England series as "one of the great architectural spaces of Liverpool".  A broad staircase rises between two pairs of Corinthian columns to a half-landing, and narrower flights climb from that on each side to the upper floor. On the ground floor on each side of the staircase are display cabinets holding the city's silver. On the half-landing is a statue of George Canning dated 1832 by Francis Chantrey, and hanging on the wall above this is a portrait of Queen Elizabeth II by Sir Edward Halliday.
  Above the staircase the dome is carried by four pendentives; it rises to a height of 106 feet (32 m) and its interior is coffered. Around the base of the dome is inscribed Liverpool's motto, "Deus Nobis Haec Otia Fecit", and in the pendentives are paintings dated 1902 by Charles Wellington Furse depicting scenes of dock labour.
caption: Town Hall Liverpool council chamber
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