Qualla: Tenby Town Hall

Tenby Town Hall: Introduction

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Seth Whales, CC BY-SA 4.0. On a July evening in 1971, Fleetwood Mac played the Tenby Town Hall. The band was between line-ups, Peter Green had left, Christine McVie had officially joined the year before, and the High Street venue was a 142-year-old market-hall-turned-courtroom-turned-events-space that had been hosting borough councils since the Welsh Wars of Independence were rumours. Twenty-eight years later, the Super Furry Animals played the same room. The building is Grade II listed. It still does both - civic earnestness and a good Saturday-night gig.

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Image: Seth Whales | CC BY-SA 4.0

Tenby Town Hall: The Guildhall Before

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Betty Longbottom, CC BY-SA 2.0. Tenby's first municipal building was a single medieval room above a gateway to St Mary's Church. It dated to at least the late 15th century - a stone box with two round-headed windows, accessible by a flight of steps, used by the borough council for meetings after Tenby received ...

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Image: Betty Longbottom | CC BY-SA 2.0

Tenby Town Hall: The 1829 Building

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit N Chadwick, CC BY-SA 2.0. By the early 19th century the borough needed more space. A new single-storey market hall went up on the High Street, designed in the neoclassical style fashionable at the time and finished in 1829. The building has a symmetrical three-bay frontage of limestone blocks, each bay fr...

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Image: N Chadwick | CC BY-SA 2.0

Tenby Town Hall: Council, Court, and Inquest

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit JKMMX, CC BY-SA 3.0. When the upper floor was added in the late 19th century, the principal room there became the new borough courtroom and council chamber. Glass roofing covered the market hall in 1891. The town hall held inquests as well as council meetings - a Victorian municipal building was expe...

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Image: JKMMX | CC BY-SA 3.0

Tenby Town Hall: Croft House

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nilfanion, CC BY-SA 4.0. In 1947 the borough council bought a large 1820s house called Croft House on The Norton - it had been the Bay Hotel - and turned it into their new offices and meeting room. The old High Street building became the events venue it largely remains. Croft House went through three nam...

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Image: Nilfanion | CC BY-SA 4.0

Tenby Town Hall: Bands and Bookings

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Humphrey Bolton, CC BY-SA 2.0. What followed at the High Street was a different sort of municipal life. Promoters booked the hall for touring acts, weddings, and the South Wales Showband. Fleetwood Mac played in July 1971; the Super Furry Animals played in April 1999 during the band's purple-suit period. Local...

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Image: Humphrey Bolton | CC BY-SA 2.0