Golden Gates

Up early to take the car into town for it’s MOT. Before J came to pick me up I had a walk into and around the town centre.

The building beyond the Golden Gates is Warrington Town Hall, in front of which are flowers people have brought in to mark the Queen’s passing. It was built (as Bank House) for wealthy businessman Thomas Patten in 1750, designed by James Gibb (also of the Radcliffe Library in Oxford and St Martin in the Fields on Trafalgar Square in London). Patten’s grandson sold it to Warrington Council in 1870.

People complained that their rates shouldn’t be used for the upkeep of a building they could not see. So the Council bought some gates. These had been exhibited at the International Exhibition in London in 1862. Made by the Coalbrookdale Company who intended that they would be a gift to Queen Victoria and stand in front of Sandringham, her Norfolk mansion. However, they made the mistake of placing the Gates near a statue they had made of Oliver Cromwell, and her courtiers aghast ensured she kept well away.

So Warrington Council snapped them up years later, And later they also acquired the fine statue of Cromwell, which incongruously stands by an office building on a main road at the edge of the town centre (extra). Oliver Cromwell was the accidental head of state and government of an accidental republic. Weird factoid - his eldest son Richard, who succeeded him as Lord Protector of the Commonwealth for a short period, was the longest lived English head of state until 2010 when overtaken by Elizabeth II (he lived to 85 years old).