Lancaster Town Hall is one of the impressive buildings in Dalton Square. Its courtroom was the venue for the famous murder trial of Doctor Buck Ruxton and the grisly murder which occurred at number 2 Dalton Square. This was a trial which would end in the hanging of Doctor Buck Ruxton for the murder of his wife Isabella and his maid Mary.
Lancaster Town Hall was financed by Lord Ashton; a local millionaire made rich after inheriting his father’s Oil Cloth and Linoleum business. Construction began in 1906, after two years of consultancy, to replace the Market Square town hall which is now the City Museum. The building opened in 1909.
Ashton also donated to local churches and a Queen Victoria Monument which stands in Dalton Square to this day.
The original Hall included not just the Council’s service and department rooms but also the Lancaster Police Station, with prisoner cells in the basement and the Magistrates Court on the ground floor. The public hall, at the back of the building, is known as the Ashton Hall (not to be confused with the building that is now Lancaster Golf Club).
The site of Dalton Square, where the Hall stands, has been inhabited for hundreds of years. It is recorded that in the early thirteenth centenary, around 1260, Dominican friars established a friary. At the time this would have placed the friary to the east of the city. The friars, rather than staying inside like monks, travelled the nearby countryside and city to preach their teachings.
In Pure Spirit
The butcher Buck Ruxton would have spent nights in the Town Hall jail and cells before standing trial in the Courtroom. Do you think the hundred-year-old building could have any form of spiritual connection to Number 2 Dalton Square where the murders took place? Keep in mind that Ruxton was hanged in Manchester.
Image Credit: Clem Rutter.
The information about the trial is incorrect. Ruxton may have been committed for trial in Lancaster but he was tried at the Manchester Assizes.
I believe that the above e-mail fro Davd Stocks is correct and that Ruxton was hung in Strangeways,
Mancester.
I have attended a couple of meeting in the courtroom in the last few months.
It's a very atmospheric room, especially on dark nights !
I also believe that it has not been used as a court since 1986, when the new Magistrates Court
was built and it is as if it has been frozen in time, with 3 black and white photographs, tatty old black bible and 2 witness declarations on the witness box.
The cells are still in tact , each with an iron bed, coarse woollen blanket and toilet, very basic. They are accessed from stone steps from the dock, with a door that leads to Dalton Square.
Do they open it to visitors on Heritage Weekend heli in September ?