Borough Buildings And Borough Hall

The Borough Buildings and Borough Hall in Hartlepool, built in 1865 by C.J. Adams, serve as municipal buildings and a former market hall, which is now a dance hall. The structure is made of brick with stone and white brick dressings and features hipped roofs covered with Welsh slate. Designed in the Italianate style, the building has two storeys and eleven bays, highlighted by a central tower that has three stages, a sprocketed pyramidal roof, a square lantern, a spire, and a metal compass/weather-vane finial.

The central entrance features a wide, round-headed opening in two planes, with the inner plane supported by corbels and now containing mid-20th century timber panelling and doors. The middle stage of the tower includes two round-headed sashed lancets and a plaque in the spandrel displaying civic arms and names of civic leaders. Above this, the upper stage has two tall blocked lancets and remnants of a balcony on corbels. The eaves cornice is supported by stepped brackets.

The other bays have round-headed windows, with those on the ground floor featuring timber mullions, transoms, and radiating glazing bars. First-floor paired windows are separated by round shafts with ornate capitals, and the relieving arches above these windows display incised geometric patterns in the tympana. The ninth bay has double four-panelled doors beneath a late 19th-century cast iron balcony. The building includes continuous moulded sills, impost bands, and hoodmoulds.

To the right, there is a contemporary single-storey three-bay extension, and the former market hall, which was converted into a dance hall in 1926, is located at the rear. Inside the Municipal Buildings, the first-floor rooms feature moulded and coved cornices and panelled ceilings, along with six original lock-up cells in the rear wing. The hall itself has an Art Deco interior, characterized by quasi Ionic columns supporting a continuous gallery on three sides, which has a panelled parapet adorned with classical motifs. The colonnade above the gallery features Egyptian-bell capitals, and the flat proscenium arch is decorated with guilloche moulding.