The Newbury town hall, a Georgian structure, has just been demolished.  It was erected in 1740-1742, taking the place of an ancient and interesting guild hall built in 1611 in the centre of the market-place.  The councillors were startled one day by the collapse of the ceiling of the hall, and when we last saw the chamber tons of heavy plaster were lying on the floor.  The roof was unsound; the adjoining street too narrow for the hundred motors that raced past the dangerous corners in twenty minutes on the day of the Newbury races; so there was no help for the old building; its fate was sealed, and it was bound to come down.  But the town possesses a very charming Cloth Hall, which tells of the palmy days of the Newbury cloth-makers, or clothiers, as they were called; of Jack of Newbury, the famous John Winchcombe, or Smallwoode, whose story is told in Deloney’s humorous old black-letter pamphlet, entitled The Most Pleasant and Delectable Historie of John Winchcombe, otherwise called Jacke of Newberie, published in 1596.  He is said to have furnished one hundred men fully equipped for the King’s service at Flodden Field, and mightily pleased Queen Catherine, who gave him a “riche chain of gold,” and wished that God would give the King many such clothiers.  You can see part of the house of this worthy, who died in 1519.  Fuller stated in the seventeenth century that this brick and timber residence had been converted into sixteen clothiers’ houses.  It is now partly occupied by the Jack of Newbury Inn.  A fifteenth-century gable with an oriel window and carved barge-board still remains, and you can see a massive stone chimney-piece in one of the original chambers where Jack used to sit and receive his friends.  Some carvings also have been discovered in an old house showing what is thought to be a carved portrait of the clothier.  It bears the initials J.W., and another panel has a raised shield suspended by strap and buckle with a monogram I.S., presumably John Smallwoode.  He was married twice, and the portrait busts on each side are supposed to represent his two wives.  Another carving represents the Blessed Trinity under the figure of a single head with three faces within a wreath of oak-leaves with floriated spandrels.[44] We should like to pursue the subject of these Newbury clothiers and see Thomas Dolman’s house, which is so fine and large and cost so much money that his workpeople used to sing a doggerel ditty:—­

  Lord have mercy upon us miserable sinners,
  Thomas Dolman has built a new house and turned away all his spinners.

  [44] History of Newbury, by Walter Money, F.S.A.

The old Cloth Hall which has led to this digression has been recently restored, and is now a museum.