Free Trade Hall, Peter Street
West and a little south of the Town Hall, coming off Deansgate lies Peter Street, and here we find the
Free Trade Hall, with important decorative allegorical sculpture. A pair of binoculars is needed to appreciate the sculpture fully.
A word first on the architecture. The architect was one of the most prominent of Manchester's architects, Edward Walters, who won the competition in the early 1850s
for a building to act as a public hall and dignify a site associated with the repeal of the Corn Laws (which incidentally gave rise to The Economist).
The resulting palazzo, much esteemed by Pevsner, was a splendid and most imposing thing, and readers of this site can have nothing but boos and hisses for the
incorporation and absorption of the building into a modern structure.
America, and Africa, by J. E. Thomas.
The sculptor was the very prolific John Thomas, and is up to his normal high standard. The principal works are a series of
nine half-round panels each with an allegorical female figure and busy surround. These panels lie above the upper floor windows. As well, there are eight
full and two half triangles of foliage etc at first floor level, and on the Southmill St side, there survives a few further triangles of foliage, and a little head. The foliage is mostly
entwined oak and olive branches, with central motifs showing little shields with various devices relating to towns trading with Manchester. Cornsheafs also feature, recalling
the Corn Law repeal. We describe the figural panels individually:
- Commerce – draped girl, in the front of a boat, holding the tiller, with barrel, package, sealed pot and rolls of canvas or cloth around her.
- Australia – draped girl, seated, holding spade and what seems to be a horn, with bull, sheep, bushel of corn and behind, trees.
- America – Semidraped girl with Indian headdress, holding broad paddle and sprig of maple leaves, seated with on one side a cotton bale, pot of
molasses, barrel and coiled rope, and on the other, buffalo, box with a sun emblem, and other less discernable items.
- Africa – proud semidraped figure holding a huge ivory tusk, seated on a lion, exotic plants behind, with pots and boxes in front, including one
overflowing with melon, sweetcorn or cassava, and grapes. She wears a heavy necklace, arm bracelet, and has braided hair under a cloth headdress –
unusually, she is European in feature.
- Centremost figure – Free Trade, draped, arms outstretched, with symmetrical composition of containers, corn, sails around and behind.
- Asia – draped figure holding treasure box and cornucopia, with decorated pot, tea chest, pot of figs, seated camel and boat behind. Her hair
is covered by loose turban.
- Europe – she is draped, seated on a horse, wearing a diadem with stars as a crown, holding an Askelapian staff, with decorated jar, Greek bust,
lyre, books and box, all very civilised.
- Industry – seated draped figure with torch, press, steam engine, anvil, riveted cylindrical boiler, cogwheel, hammer and ladel. The spandrel triangle
below this at 1st floor level shows a little shield with girl seated by factory with smoking chimney, and a ship with bale of wool.
- Arts – seated wreathed figure, draped, holding lyre on top of a Corinthian pillar, with palette, sculpted bust, globe and telescope. On her other side,
she rests one arm on a plinth supporting an Aladdin-style lamp, and various musical instruments – horn, trumpet, and cello with a wreath. Alas, the face, and that of the bust,
are repairs, good, but not quite in Thomas's style.
As is usual with John Thomas, the girls are Graeco-Victorian, tending to the muscular, solid of limb and neck and shoulder, big-breasted, and with rather round faces.
Idealised and attractive certainly, but neither the hard beauty we might find in the later 19th Century ideal, or the slender girlishness of the New Sculptors.
Free Trade.
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Free Trade.