The Civic Mayor's Parlour
To the right of the front door is the parlour of the chairman of the council, which was formerly the mayor's parlour. According to Paine, 'in case any mayor was inclined to keep his mayorality in it (that is, the Mansion House) care was taken to provide convenient apartments to receive his family'. But the rooms provided above the second floor, accessible only by the back stairs, were hardly adequate for the purpose. Very few mayors have ever made use of them. The inventories describe them as a best chamber and servants garrets. The mayor was not allocated this ground-floor parlour until 1835.
The office of mayor is very old-established in Doncaster. (Since May 2002, the mayor of Doncaster has been an elected office.) The earliest reference to a mayor in the borough records is in 1427, when Thomas Dowssyng, mayor, was witness to a property transaction. The borough formally had royal permission to appoint a mayor in 1467 and, from 1493, there is a complete list of mayors down to the present day.
The photographs of the mayors from 1974 (when the present Metropolitan Borough came into being) are hung on the walls of the Front Committee Room. Doncaster Archives has the portraits of most of the mayors of Doncaster from 1835 to 1974, which formerly hung in the mansion house.
