Local taxpayers thrilled to learn £20 million went on haunted dog mural and GCSE furniture
After three years of closure, several suspicious invoices, and what appears to be a pact with the Victorian spirit world, Rochdale Town Hall has reopened to the public. What residents hoped would be a bold civic statement has instead become an elaborate shrine to baroque madness, collapsing timelines, and a dog so long it’s been declared a UNESCO mental health crisis.
The Town Hall, now proudly featuring desks looted from a defunct school and a ceiling last seen during a Druidic blood rite, invites visitors to come “see history come alive.” Critics have pointed out that it’s less “alive” and more “mummified, lacquered and arranged into a Zodiac-themed tax write-off.”
“We wanted to keep it authentic,” said one council official, polishing a brass inkwell from 1897. “So we brought in historically accurate elements like child-sized desks for adult councillors, a bar next to a telescope, and windows last cleaned during the Crimean War.”
But it’s the haunting detail in the council chamber that’s drawing the most attention: a bizarrely elongated greyhound painted by Bernard Thompson, a decorating lecturer whose name is now whispered with the same reverence locals give to asbestos or the phrase “managed decline.”
The dog, stretching grotesquely across the wall like a fever dream in Dulux, was Bernard’s solution to a nine-inch gap in the decor caused by a bricked-up door. “Could we have fixed the plasterwork?” asked one council historian. “Yes. But why do that when you can commit an eldritch act of perspective vandalism instead?”
Visitors are encouraged to squint at the decorative frieze and “feel something deep inside uncoil.” Several have since reported hearing faint panting noises and developing an irrational fear of whippets.
Elsewhere, the Zodiac Room, ormerly a bar, now seemingly a Victorian astral projection chamber, is wowing tourists with its gold-leaf ceiling adorned with ancient star signs and the distant, lingering scent of Pernod. Experts say it reflects the era’s obsession with astrology, mysticism, and developing gout in soft furnishings.
“Dickens was into this sort of thing,” said a tour guide, gazing into the chandelier with the expression of someone who’s seen too much. “So was Ptolemy. And now, so are you.”
The stained glass windows, once so waterlogged they were technically moss, have been restored at enormous expense and now glow ominously with the kind of light usually associated with cursed manuscripts and late-stage capitalism.
Locals are invited to take part in guided tours, learn about Rochdale’s Gothic legacy, and experience for themselves the creeping sense that the building is not just restored, but waiting.
Proceeds will go towards maintaining the Town Hall’s heritage, reanimating Bernard, and building a small annex to house whatever dark entity lives in the ceiling.
