Corn Exchange, Haverhill

The first corn exchange in the town was erected in the High Street just to the south of St Mary's Parish Church in 1857.[2][3] However, in the mid-1880s, a group of local businessmen decided to form a private company, to be known as the "Haverhill Corn Exchange Company Limited", to finance and commission a new and more substantial corn exchange for the town.[4] The site they selected was the forecourt of the old livestock market.[5][6]

The new building was designed by Frank Whitmore in the Renaissance Revival style, built in red brick and completed in 1889.[7][8] The design involved a symmetrical main frontage of three bays facing onto Withersfield Road. The central bay featured a short flight of steps leading up to a round-headed opening with voussoirs and a keystone flanked by Doric order columns supporting an entablature, inscribed with the words "Corn Exchange", and a balustrade. The other bays were fenestrated by a bi-partite round headed windows on the ground floor. The first floor was well set back in relation to the ground floor and was fenestrated by a tri-partite segmentally headed window with an architrave and a keystone. There was a gable above which was surmounted a double ogee-shaped pediment.[1] The architectural historian, Nikolaus Pevsner, was unimpressed with the design which he described as being "of little merit".[9]

The use of the building as a corn exchange declined significantly in the wake of the Great Depression of British Agriculture in the late 19th century.[10] Instead, it was used as a community events centre,[1] before being acquired by St Felix Catholic Church for use as their social club. St Felix Catholic Church then sold the building to a developer to fund a new church in Princess Way in 2006.[11] However, the new owner failed to maintain the building and, after it remained vacant and deteriorating for over a decade, St Edmundsbury Borough Council served a notice on the owners, in May 2017, demanding that repairs be carried out.[12] Haverhill Town Council subsequently considered acquiring the dilapidated building but, in October 2017, abandoned its plans to do so after the owner's lenders decided to block any proposed sale.[13]

• Corn exchanges in England