Cambridge Town Hall

Cambridge Town Hall

The Cambridge Town Hall stands on Victoria Street in the centre of Cambridge, Waikato, and is one of the town's landmark heritage buildings as well as its principal function venue. It is a Waipa District Council facility, operated as a hire venue for meetings, conferences, performances and private events.

### History

The building opened in 1909, designed by architect A.B. Herrold and built by Chappell & Wooley. It originally housed both the town hall and the borough offices. American philanthropist Andrew Carnegie granted the borough council one thousand pounds to establish a library in the building, and the library remained there until 1977. Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga lists the Town Hall as a Category 2 historic place.

The hall has been woven into Cambridge's civic life for more than a century. It hosted one of the town's first ANZAC Day commemorations in 1916, and was turned into a temporary hospital during the 1918 influenza epidemic. Through the twentieth century it served as a picture theatre and dance hall and as the venue for theatrical and musical performances and civic occasions. More recently a heritage survey and conservation plan informed restoration work, including consideration of the gallery that had been compromised by the development of the Prince William Theatre in the 1980s, along with colour schemes and treatment of the Oamaru stone window surrounds.

### Spaces

The venue offers a main hall with space for up to 500 people, plus smaller meeting rooms, and all three spaces can be combined for larger or multi-part events.

• Main hall - up to 500 people, suited to conferences, performances, dinners and large public events.
• Victoria Room - a flexible meeting room with its own access door directly from Victoria Street, which can be split into two separate spaces using a concertina dividing door. The venue lists a room used for meetings and events of up to 100 attendees featuring a raised dais, kitchenette and toilet.
• Edwardian Room - a more intimate space accommodating up to 40 seated.

The separate street entrance to the Victoria Room is a practical detail for organisers, allowing a meeting or registration desk to run independently of whatever is happening in the main hall.

### Catering and access

Kitchen and bar facilities are available, set up for self-catering or for a caterer of the hirer's choice rather than an in-house catering monopoly. Accessible parking and accessible toilets are provided, and there is a ramp at the Lake Street entrance. A hirer's guide is published covering hire conditions and practical arrangements; organisers with specific audio-visual, staging or lighting needs should confirm what is available in-house.

### Suitability

With a 500-capacity main hall, two divisible smaller rooms, kitchen and bar facilities, step-free access and a genuinely historic setting in the middle of Cambridge, the Town Hall handles conferences with breakout streams, AGMs and public meetings, gala dinners, awards evenings, expos, performances and weddings. Its town-centre position, roughly 20 minutes from Hamilton, also makes it workable for delegates travelling in for the day. See other Waikato venues.