The building was commissioned by
Charles Bingham, 1st Earl of Lucan, whose seat was at Castlebar House, as a trading house for merchants buying and selling local
linen goods. Some 200
looms were in use in the town when the linen industry was at its peak. It was designed in the
Italianate style, built in
ashlar stone and was completed in 1790. The design involved a symmetrical main frontage of three bays facing onto the street. The central bay featured a doorway flanked by
Doric order columns supporting a
pediment; on the first floor there was a round headed window with a
window sill, an
architrave and a double
keystone, while the outer bays were fenestrated by
sash windows with window sills on the ground floor and by round headed windows with window sills,
voussoirs and keystones on the first floor. At roof level, there was a
cornice and a slate hipped roof. Internally, the principal room was the trading room on the ground floor and there was a gallery on the first floor. During close hand-to-hand fighting, between the attacking French forces, under the command of General
Jean Humbert, and the forces defending the British garrison, under the command of General
Gerard Lake, at the
battle of Castlebar during the
Irish Rebellion of 1798, some shots damaged the doorcase of the building. After the battle Humbert used the building as a venue for a ball to celebrate his victory over the British forces and to rejoice at the proclamation of a short-lived provisional
Irish Republic. The local linen trade died out in the first half of the 18th century and, in the wake
Great Famine in the late 1840s, the people of the town were allowed to make use of the building. It then served as a meeting place for Castlebar Urban District Council until councillors decided to relocate to larger premises at Marsh House in Newtown Street in September 1979. The Education Centre, which had been established in the old Methodist Church on The Mall in 1976, relocated into the old town hall which then became the Linenhall Arts Centre in 1986. ==References==