Talk:List of city and town halls in England

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Arrange by county[edit]

The England list is getting very large and unwieldy now. Might it be a good idea to divide the list up into ceremonial counties? Not sure whether something similar is warranted for Scotland, Wales etc yet. G-13114 (talk) 17:30, 30 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Hi - Yes, I having been giving this some thought myself. Breaking it up into ceremonial counties may take some time to do and I am not sure how useful it would be if users are searching alphabetically. Separating Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland and moving them into another article would certainly make sense. Best wishes. Dormskirk (talk) 18:38, 30 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

One of the reasons I placed the list into the table format was so that it would be sortable (for age and height) so that readers could see the oldest/newest and tallest town halls in the country. This ability would be lost if the list is divided by county. It just depends whether we care about this function. I won't disagree that the list is getting too long now, as it grows by the day. Rcsprinter123 (discourse) 01:31, 1 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

In my opinion the fact that readers can sort for age and height is great; (I have been able to ascertain the date of completion in all cases but obtaining information on height is more challenging). The main issue is the length of the article and the only way to resolve that would be to hive off some entries into another article. It is very difficult to decide which town halls are prominent and which are not and I agree with a comment that Rcsprinter123 has previously made that we cannot "be judges of what is prominent enough". A quick solution would be to hive off Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland into a separate article; we could then perhaps split up the England list alphabetically but that inhibits the ability to sort the list as a whole. Best wishes. Dormskirk (talk) 12:21, 1 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I would argue that a by county division would make it easier to navigate than scrolling through the current lengthy list tbh. Maybe we could have a separate section listing the heights etc, if that's considered important. G-13114 (talk) 18:11, 1 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

But that does not deal with the main problem which is the length of the article (unless you have a separate article for each county or each region). If we are not concerned about the length but are interested in counties, then we might be able to add an extra sortable column showing the county for each item. Dormskirk (talk) 18:36, 1 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I have added a sortable column for counties which should help if readers are interested in a particular county. Best wishes. Dormskirk (talk) 21:42, 1 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Counties in Wales[edit]

The areas in the county column for Wales are currently local authorities not counties. For consistency with England, Scotland and Northern Ireland where we use counties or lieutenancy areas, I suggest we change to lieutenancy areas in Wales as well (which have the same boundaries as the Preserved counties of Wales). Views welcome. Dormskirk (talk) 10:05, 18 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I would much rather use the current principal areas of Wales than the eight preserved counties as it allows more geographic precision. I have no objection to changing the title of the column, though. Rcsprinter123 (face) 11:34, 18 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds good to me. Thanks for the feedback. Dormskirk (talk) 11:44, 18 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Split by home nation[edit]

Further to some of the discussion above, I propose splitting this article into separate lists for England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales. I suspect the easiest way of achieving that will be to cut and paste the sections on Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales to new articles entitled "List of city and town halls in Scotland", "List of city and town halls in Northern Ireland" and "List of city and town halls in Wales" and then move what is left of this article to "List of city and town halls in England" leaving the UK article as a list of links. Views welcome. Dormskirk (talk) 12:24, 13 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Rcsprinter123 - Are you OK with this? Best wishes. Dormskirk (talk) 17:44, 15 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Please go ahead. It seems the only logical solution to the length of the thing. I don’t know how you churn out those town hall articles on pretty much a daily basis. Rcsprinter123 (spill beans) 20:28, 15 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

OK. Thanks for that. Best wishes, Dormskirk (talk) 20:31, 15 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Criteria for inclusion[edit]

Has there been any discussion somewhere setting out the scope of which buildings could / should be included on this list? Clearly the majority are called "Town Hall" or "City Hall", but that isn't the case for all the current entries. Should we include:

Buildings which have served as the principal offices of a local authority - if so, are we restricting it to urban authorities (e.g. Urban District / Municipal Borough / City / Town Council) or all local authorities?
Buildings which have served as the principal meeting place of a local authority (which haven't always been the same building as the offices)?
Buildings called "Town Hall" or "City Hall", whether or not they were ever used by a local authority?

Many of the buildings on the list no longer serve as town / city halls in a local government sense, but from a quick look they all seem to be still standing. Is it a requirement for inclusion here that the building still exists? Apologies if this has all been discussed and agreed somewhere else. Thanks. Stortford (talk) 20:04, 21 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Hi - My intention was to include, in each case, the principle meeting place of the local authority but I have also added a few events venues which call themselves "town halls" e.g. Cheltenham Town Hall. And yes, in my view, the building should still exist. Best wishes, Dormskirk (talk) 22:57, 21 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion[edit]

The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion:

Cheltenham Municipal Offices.jpg

Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 05:33, 8 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]