Town Hall

The building is a town hall and market, originally incorporating two shops, constructed between 1860 and 1862. Designed by JP Jones and modified by John Johnstone of Newcastle, it is currently being converted into a community centre and library. The building is of group value, representing a significant contribution to the area’s architectural heritage.

The structure is built of coursed squared sandstone with ashlar dressings, topped with a Welsh slate roof featuring bands of fishscale pattern. It is in the Gothic Revival style and symmetrical in design. The building has two storeys and eight bays by six windows. The central bays have paired 2-centred arches with wide pilasters and elaborate foliage capitals; the left arch is blocked and contains a 2-light window with 2-centred heads. Three large moulded stone brackets above the pilasters support a first-floor pierced stone balcony. The shops flanking the entrance each have 4-panelled double doors and overlights flanked by paired windows, all with shouldered heads and nookshafts. A first-floor string connects the windows. Tall, pointed-arch windows with plate tracery are on the first floor, with two shouldered lights below a transom. The central pair of windows open directly onto the balcony. An eaves corbel table runs along the building. The steeply pitched hipped roofs above the outer bays are linked by a principal roof, featuring a high, central octagonal louvred lantern with eight lucarnes at its base and a tall spirelet. Clock faces are set into the east and west front of the lantern's base. Tall gabled 2-light dormers with roundels in the gable peaks are present in the main roof, and lancets are in three stepped lucarnes in the flanking hipped roofs, which have ornamental cast-iron crestings. A long left return is in a similar style, but lacks the central emphasis.

The interior features ribbed quadripartite vaults with leaf terminals to the entrance arches. The central covered market hall contains small shop units, many of which have been altered, but some retain cast-iron piers and one has a small corner cast-iron fire surround. The main and subsidiary staircases have iron balusters, hollow-moulded corners, moulded handrail, and a wreathed handrail on the fluted newel posts. The hall along the front on the first floor has a wave-moulded frieze and a hammer-beam roof, with a shallow north apse featuring fluted Corinthian pilasters and a segmental head to the proscenium arch, which is a circa 1960 addition and is slated for removal during the current restoration. A council chamber, inserted over the covered market, contains borough arms depicted in stained glass in the high windows. The interior was undergoing alterations at the time of the 1991 survey. Stop-chamfered spine beams with run-out stops are present.