INVERELLThe first School of Arts in Inverell was erected in 1868. It was described as "a small brick building" and, as far as can be determined, stood somewhere in the general vicinity of the present Inverell Town Hall at the corner of Evans and Otho streets. When the School of Arts went into early recess in 1875, its building was taken over by the Inverell Municipal Council and used as a venue for its meetings. Prior to this time, the Council had met in the nearby Inverell Court House. A clue to the positioning of the original School of Arts building comes from the recollections of J. R. Hatcher, Inverell's first Town Clerk, who stated "the first Council Chamber was in about the same position as the present hall, though of course, it was not in alignment." The evidence suggests that the original School of Arts building was less than imposing. During the time of its use by the Municipal Council, it attracted some scathing comment: "The stranger could not, however, pass without noticing the magnificent brick structure, known as the Town Hall, nearly every pane of glass in which was broken, as though the municipal body had been engaged in throwing something more solid than mud at each other … the most disreputable looking council chambers the visitors remember to have seen." In addition to its use as Council Chambers during the 1870s and 1880s, the School of Arts building also served, along with the larger rooms of the various hotels, as a popular community meeting venue. The ultimate fate of the original building is not known but, presumably, it was simply demolished to make way for subsequent buildings on the site. When the School of Arts was revived in 1885, its meetings were held in the old court house. The record shows that a new reading room was built soon afterwards but it is not known where it stood. It would seem likely that it was somewhere in the general area of the old court house and the original School of Arts building but this is only speculation. An intriguing reference to a School of Arts building being destroyed by fire in 1911 may have been a reference to the reading room built in 1885. In 1906, the Inverell School of Arts had prospered to the extent that it was able to erect a new building, fronting Evans Street, about midway between Otho and Campbell streets. This building, which still stands, had an imposing façade and contained "a large reading room, a billiard room, and a well stocked library." A central hallway ran from the front to the back of the building with rooms on either side. Within a very short time, it was decided that a hall should be built on the southern side of the new School of Arts building to provide a venue for large social gatherings and entertainments. This hall, which also still stands, was built to a complementary although not exactly matching architectural design and was opened in December 1909 by Mr A. M. Cansdell, the School of Arts President who had overseen the construction of both buildings.The architect for both projects was Inverell's own J. F. O'Connor, himself an active member of the School of Arts.
The School of Arts Hall was separated from the 1906 building by an open passageway a little over two metres wide. Within this passageway was a set of external stairs which led to an upstairs gallery at the front of the hall. The hall itself had a ticket office on the left of its centrally located front door and a cloakroom on the right. There was a supper room at the rear, linked to the main hall through a "servery hatch" and there were exit doorways from the hall into the external passageway. It is interesting that the hall did not have a fixed stage. A distinctive feature of its interior was a series of imitation columns along each of the main walls. These columns were surmounted by decorative capitals, one of which has been painstakingly and beautifully restored in its original attractive colours. Both buildings served the Inverell School of Arts for the remainder of its existence. They were taken over by the Inverell Municipal Council in 1937 and used as the Council Chambers. In the following year, the School of Arts Hall was renamed the "Butler Hall" in honour of long-serving Municipal Council Member and Mayor, Spencer Joseph St Clair Butler. Its StoryThe Inverell School of Arts had its beginnings in 1866 when sixty men, most of them young, attended the inaugural meeting of the Mutual Improvement Society. A little over a year later, in November 1867, they had accumulated sufficient money to open a School of Arts and to start collecting books for a library.
The first flush of enthusiasm for the movement lasted only eight years. In this time, it would seem, lectures, debates and meetings of various kinds were held under the auspices of the School of Arts and a reasonably sized lending library was established. For whatever reason, the organisation went into recess in 1875 and the Inverell Municipal Council then took over both the School of Arts building, and its library which it continued to operate as a council service. A revival in "mutual improvement" apparently took place in the early 1880s when, according to Elizabeth Wiedemann in her 1981 book, World of its Own, "a prodigious number of clubs and societies existed, with fluctuating popularity. Inverell had night classes, debates, lectures and discussions run by several different organisations". One of these organisations was the School of Arts which was revived in 1885. By December 1886, it had taken over the town's public library service again and, through its new reading room, was offering a thousand volumes for loan to its members. While few records exist of the activities of the Inverell School of Arts at the different times in its history, it is clear that support for it was very strong during the early years of the Twentieth Century. The two beautiful buildings, mentioned above, which were built in 1906 and 1909, are testimony to a great deal of public support and interest in the activities of the School of Arts. This interest and support appears to have continued until at least the mid 1930s. As well as its reading and book lending services, the School of Arts provided a venue for billiard games and card playing competitions. There were, from time to time, more "educational" activities, such as a meeting of the School of Arts Round Table, described in the Inverell Times of 6 November 1936. This group debated the topic "that the material salvation of the world lies in dictatorship", before an audience which was described as "comparatively large". A subsequent meeting of the same forum debated the more light-hearted topic, "that the Modern Miss makes a Bad Missus"!
One of the most valuable services provided by the Inverell School of Arts over the years, however, was the provision of its Hall for social and community gatherings. Frequent reminiscences tell of the hall being used as a supper room for balls and other large functions held in the nearby Inverell Town Hall. A direct passageway linked the two buildings. The hall was a popular venue for functions that were of a reasonable size but not big enough to warrant the use of the very large Town Hall. The Inverell School of Arts appears to have come to a fairly sudden end. The Inverell Times of 2 August 1937 reports on the Annual Meeting of the School of Arts under the headlines of "Lengthy Report Received", "Difficulty in Carrying on" and "Lack of Public Support". Details were given of declining membership, subscriptions and billiard fees, along with the emergence of a number of competing private circulating libraries in town. A Mr Looby commented: "Twenty-five years ago, they would have taken £40 a month for billiards, now they hardly take that in a year. There were fewer amusements in those days. Now the public has all sorts of counter attractions." An effort had been made to present the School of Arts building as a "rest and writing room for country folk" by repainting and refurnishing some of its rooms but in the words of the President in his 1937 report, "it has not been availed of as anticipated." Above all, the report revealed that the organisation was still paying off its building fund, presumably from the building extension program of 1906 to 1909. The meeting in August 1937 decided to ask the Inverell Municipal Council if it would be interested in taking over the School of Arts and its library. The Council agreed and, after the necessary Government approvals were obtained, a new committee was elected to attend to the winding up of the organisation. The library passed into the hands of the Council and, as mentioned above, the Council was soon using the School of Arts buildings as its chambers. Its Later UseThe Inverell Municipal Council remained in the building until 1962 when it moved to larger premises. Soon afterwards, the 1906 School of Arts Building became the headquarters for the Inverell Art Society and was set up as a gallery. In 1981, the Butler Hall was added to the gallery complex and in 1995, a major refurbishing and redevelopment program linked the two buildings into their present attractive configuration. The two former School of Arts buildings now form part of one of rural Australia's most appealing and well managed regional art galleries. Its Significance to the CommunityThe School of Arts in Inverell had a somewhat chequered career. After a very early, enthusiastic start in 1867, it went into early recess only to be revived some ten years later. For the next fifty years or so, from 1885 to 1937, it served an important community function by providing library and reading services, billiard facilities and a popular venue for local functions, meetings and entertainments. Interestingly, Elizabeth Wiedemann and others speak of a feeling at times in the Inverell community that the School of Arts was a rather "exclusive club". While members of the organisation could make use of its reading room and borrow its books, its library and other facilities were not available to all. The suggestion has been advanced that this perceived detachment from the general population may have contributed to its relatively early demise in 1937. While the School of Arts ceased to provide its community services from that point onwards, its buildings went on to play a vital role in the civic life of the town. Today, these beautifully preserved and maintained examples of early Twentieth Century rural Australian architecture continue to serve the community and are amongst Inverell's most appealing heritage buildings.
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