The Mayor’s Parlour

In the Mayor’s Parlour, the plaques around the walls have been presented over the years by army, naval and air force units and other organisations that have made official visits to the town. The copper plates above the sideboard are from Scarborough, Ontario, one of at least sixteen other places around the world which share the name Scarborough, including Scarborough Hill (Oregon), Scarborough Reef (South China Sea) and Scarborough Bluffs (overlooking Lake Ontario).

There is a picture on the right hand side of the door of the town’s former adopted Royal Navy ship, RFA Waveruler. The bell from HMS Apollo, another of the town’s adopted ships, is on display in the Mayoral Corridor cabinet. On the sideboard is the cap of a German naval shell recovered after it had been fired through the wall of the Grand Hotel during the bombardment of the town by two German battlecruisers on 16th December 1914 and later made into an ornamental inkstand. Also in the Mayor’s Parlour is a photograph of Sir Winston Churchill, then Prime Minister, sitting in the Mayor’s chair during his visit to the town in 1952 to attend the Conservative Party Conference. Note the illuminated address presented by the Council to John Woodall in thanks for the mayor’s gold chain of office, which he presented to the town in November 1852 at the conclusion of his term of office as Mayor. Two of the paintings in this room, ‘The Raising of the Green Howards’ and ‘Ardoyne Patrol’, were presented by the Green Howards, the famous Yorkshire regiment, the only military unit to have been granted the Freedom of the Borough, which confers the right to parade through the town with ‘drums beating, colours flying and bayonets fixed’. The Green Howards are now part of the Yorkshire Regiment, formed in June 2006. New colours were presented to the Yorkshire Regiment by HRH the Duke of York on 8th July 2010 at a ceremony in York. The Yorkshire Regiment, with the new colours, exercised their right to parade through the town on Armed Forces Day in June 2010 and a shell was presented to the Mayor which is now in the Green Howards corner of the Parlour. The Regiment exercised their rights again on Armed Forces Day in June 2014 when a formal parade took place.