PUBLIC BUILDING IN BRIGG HAS GIVEN 92 YEARS' SERVICE

A property in Brigg town centre has given almost 100 years' public service.
Many people will have walked past the former Arley House, on Bigby Street, without noticing it or knowing the role played in local government.
This is because, over many decades, the once standalone property opposite the former Post Office was joined by at either side, and behind, by successive additions made to what later became the Hewson House municipal office complex.
Arley House - the former detached home of the Bletcher and/or Sowters families - was acquired in 1930 by Brigg Rural District Council and converted to office use.
Brigg RDC extended its Bigby Street/Station Road offices considerably in the 1960s, and Glanford Borough Council added another block in the early 1980s.
North Lincolnshire Council, founded in 1996, soon decided to name the office complex in honour of Coun George Hewson, of Brigg, who was a long-serving local, district and county councillor and also Mayor.
The unitary authority recently closed Hewson House as "surplus to requirements" - relocating many employees to sites in Scunthorpe.
It also plans to refurbish an office block it owns on Cary Lane - the former Brigg UDC Town Hall of the early 1970s. Planning permission is being sought at the moment.
Removals have been observed at Hewson House since it ceased to be council's second largest office complex (see picture below).
 

Otherwise, the site is now quiet - a far cry from its busy years when hundreds of office staff came and went, Mondays to Fridays, and the general public visited to access council services.
At various times many of these were reassigned to the 'hub' in the Market Place's Angel building.
North Lincolnshire Council now wishes to see Hewson House, and adjoining land as far as the railway station, redeveloped to provide living accommodation.