History
It was built in 1780 for the Middlesex Quarter Sessions of the justices of the peace, replacing nearby Hicks Hall which had fallen into disrepair. The new sessions house also was for some time known as "Hicks Hall".
The Sessions House served as the main judicial and administrative centre of Middlesex until the creation of Middlesex County Council and the London County Council in 1889. In the division of assets between the new bodies in that year, the Sessions House was within the boundaries of the County of London and was allocated to the London County Council. It continued in use for judicial purposes until 1921 when it was sold and all remaining business was transferred to the Sessions House in Newington Causeway. The administration of Middlesex was later based at the Middlesex Guildhall in Westminster, which was also within the County of London.
The old sessions House eventually fell into disrepair. It has however in later years been bought by a masonic trust and restored to its former glory.
Read more about this topic: Middlesex Sessions House
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The greatest horrors in the history of mankind are not due to the ambition of the Napoleons or the vengeance of the Agamemnons, but to the doctrinaire philosophers. The theories of the sentimentalist Rousseau inspired the integrity of the passionless Robespierre. The cold-blooded calculations of Karl Marx led to the judicial and business-like operations of the Cheka.”
—Aleister Crowley (1875–1947)
“Regarding History as the slaughter-bench at which the happiness of peoples, the wisdom of States, and the virtue of individuals have been victimized—the question involuntarily arises—to what principle, to what final aim these enormous sacrifices have been offered.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
“... the history of the race, from infancy through its stages of barbarism, heathenism, civilization, and Christianity, is a process of suffering, as the lower principles of humanity are gradually subjected to the higher.”
—Catherine E. Beecher (1800–1878)