page_title: Westgate Hall, Canterbury
section_title: Building
hierarchical_section_title: Westgate Hall, Canterbury / History / Building
caption_attribution_description: A small section of background detail from a photograph in the Barrett Collection, showing the Westgate Hall having survived the 1944 bombing of Canterbury in World War II. The main photo, from which this extract was taken, showed the bombed Barretts premises in the foreground. Full archive, library and online searches have been made to ascertain the name of the photographer, without success.
context_page_description: Westgate Hall is a hundred-year-old drill hall and community space in a Conservation area of Canterbury, Kent, notable for being the subject of extended public controversy since October 2009, when the City of Canterbury budget 2010−2011 threatened to have the building demolished. The building is now leased by Curzon Cinemas.
context_section_description: In 1874 on the site of the present hall there was Welby Square and a large, laid-out garden stretching back to St Peter's Lane where the gardener's cottage remains today. It was called Masters' Exotic Nursery: an exotic garden with two springs giving chalybeate and mineral water and a very tall Lombardy poplar 16 ft (4.9 m) in girth at base. It can be seen on the 1874 map below. The nursery, which stretched northward from Welby Square, belonged to the Masters family and occupied 30 acres (120,000 m²) of land. The gardens were dismantled and sold in 1896, and the last owner of the nursery was George Mount. The square was replaced by Westgate Lane; West Gate Hall and a car park are now on the site of the garden.
  1899 maps do not yet show the hall in Welby Square, but a panorama photo taken in 1900 does show it, so the hall was probably built between 1899 and 1900. It is not known for what purpose it was built, but St Peter's Mission Hall is mentioned as being in Welby square in the early days of the hall. It was used as a drill hall for the Territorials during World War I, and survived the 1944 bombing of Canterbury in World War II. It appears in a cityscape photograph taken in 1900. The hall was originally built expensively with a fancy tiled roof and large windows at each end, with a stained-glass panel in the top window at the Westgate Hall Lane end. The Victorian building next door was later knocked through between the wars and the foyer given Art Deco fittings. This building is now in a Conservation area, and a project exists to record all drill halls before they are lost to redevelopment.
caption: Westgate Hall 1944, having survived bombing
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