Town Hall

BISHOP AUCKLAND

NZ2130 MARKET PLACE 634-1/8/96 Town Hall 20/09/72

GV II*

Town hall and market, with reading room and assembly room, originally incorporating 2 shops. In process of conversion to community centre and library. 1860-62. By JP Jones. For Bishop Auckland Town Hall and Market Company Ltd. Design modified by John Johnstone of Newcastle. C20 internal alterations. MATERIALS: coursed squared sandstone with ashlar dressings, and Welsh slate roof with bands of fishscale. PLAN: Gothic Revival style. Symmetrical. EXTERIOR: 2 storeys, 6x8 windows. Paired 2-centred arches in central bays have wide pilasters with elaborate foliage capitals. Left arch blocked and containing 2-light window with 2-centred heads in stone lintel. 3 large moulded stone brackets over pilasters support first-floor pierced stone balcony. Former shops flanking entrance each have 4-panelled double doors and overlights flanked by paired windows, all with shouldered heads and nookshafts. First-floor string. Aprons and sloping sills to tall first-floor windows which have pointed arches and plate tracery, with 2 shouldered lights below transom formed by impost string on which dripmoulds rest. Central pair open onto balcony. Eaves corbel table. Steeply pitched hipped roofs over outer pairs of bays linked by ridge of principal roof with high central octagonal louvred lantern, with 8 lucarnes at base of tall spirelet. Gabled clock faces in east and west fronts of base to lantern. Tall gabled 2-light dormers in main roof have roundels in gable peaks; lancets in 3 stepped lucarnes in flanking hipped roofs which have ornamental cast-iron crestings. Long left return in similar style but without central emphasis. INTERIOR shows ribbed quadripartite vaults, with leaf terminals, to entrance arches. Central covered market hall has small shop units opening off, most altered but some with cast-iron piers visible, and one with small corner cast-iron fire surround. Main and subsidiary stairs have iron balusters with hollow-moulded corners supporting moulded handrail, wreathed at foot on fluted newel. Hall along front on first floor has wave-moulded frieze and hammer-beam roof, shallow north apse with fluted Corinthian pilasters and shallow segmental head to proscenium arch. Proscenium arch in front, c1960 is to be removed in current restoration. Council chamber inserted over covered market has borough arms in stained glass of windows high in wall. Interior being altered at time of survey (1991). (Builder: April 1860: 210-211; ; Views of Bishop Auckland 1860-67: UD/BA/238).

Listing NGR: NZ2115730135