Wolsingham
Wolsingham Mechanics Institute
Last Updated:
12 Sept 2025
Wolsingham
This is a
Mechanics Institute
54.729972, -1.883680
Founded in
Current status is
Extant
Designer (if known):
Now the Charles Attwood Constitutional Club
With any village of a solid industrial pedigree, there’s a very good chance you’ll find a Mechanics Institute. This is the quaint iteration at Wolsingham.
The institute moved here in the 1850s, moving into a building previously known as the Cross Keys Inn after occupying only a small room in the Town Hall over the road. The institute had actually existed since 1820 as you can see on the three storey element on the building, but I’m not sure where they resided back in this period. It appears the benefactors of the Institute eventually rebuilt it after around 1883 and later rebuilt the the section with 3 floors. A piece from a few decades previous states the irony of an institute to pry away folk from alcohol occupying an old inn.
Attwood, the man responsible for Wolsingham’s industrial growth, had been very much active here since his venture was founded in 1844, and in the 1850s he is recognised as the chair of the institute with Henry Pease, of the famous ironstone family, deputising him on occasion.
Everything was provided here - community & solidarity namely but also books with its own library inside. Institutes were pursuits of enlightenment against the concern of less sober leisures, and I always think of them as a social club without the pints. A rifle club was established, a billiards club as well as a reading room for any folk, rich or poor, to access newspapers and literature. You can see this as philanthropic and conscientious, or do-gooding and paternal to make the workforce more productive - whichever position you stand in.
I don’t think this place as operated as the institute for years though. It’s now the Charles Attwood Constitutional Club, though I’m not sure what he’d make of the drink.
Listing Description (if available)
The site of our institute appears just below the Town Hall on these Ordnance Surveys of Wolsingham from the middle and the end of the 19th century. Back then, it was very much a typical market village layout with an open court in its centre with a three sided market place and town square smack bang in the middle. Industry was there, but limited to the mills on the south side as well as the Demesme mill near the Anglican and Catholic churches. It was just after the production of the first map when Attwood's steel works was constructed on the eastern fringes of the villages and changed its complexion entirely with industrial terraces and the expansion of our institute.
The 1921 Ordnance Survey presents the modest expansions of the village, where houses have filled the haps alongside the clusters of industrial rows. A recreation ground was also added for this increased population alongside a couple more places of worship and a cinema near the station. This is a settlement on the precipice of modernity with amenities we would come to expect today.
The Constitutional Club in July 2025
The Royal Oak and Cross Keys in the 1880s - the two buildings when went on to be demolished for the Institute. With this in mind, it's likely they claimed the thatched Cross Keys for a decade or two before clearance. Unknown original source.
