Tammy Hall 1778

The Tammy Hall stands to the rear of the Court House. When first built, in 1778, it was a much larger building, extending across the site of the present Town Hall, with two stories holding over 200 stalls of merchants selling “tammies, wildbores and camlets”, which were types of coarse worsted cloth. Wakefield was at that time a major centre for the wool trade, but overseas competition and the merchants’ restrictive practices led to the trade declining, and the Hall being let and used as a mill after1823.

After use in Wakefield’s Exhibition of 1865, the Tammy Hall was partly demolished in the late 1870’s to make room for the new Town Hall. To the surviving part, on the left of the picture, was added a matching extension, from the doorway to the right, and the resulting building converted into a police and fire brigade station, with fine carvings of Victorian firefighting and a police officer with helmet still to be seen.