Town Hall (Formerley Wigan and District Mining and Technical College) and Railings is a Grade II listed building in the Wigan local planning authority area, England. First listed on 11 July 1983. Town hall. 11 related planning applications.
Town Hall (Formerley Wigan and District Mining and Technical College) and Railings
- WRENN ID
- shifting-terrace-gold
- Grade
- II
- Local Planning Authority
- Wigan
- Constituency
- Wigan MP: Lisa Nandy (Lab)
- Country
- England
- Date first listed
- 11 July 1983
- Type
- Town hall
- Address
- Town Hall (Formerley Wigan and District Mining and Technical College) and Railings, Library Street
- OS grid reference
- SD 583 055
- Coordinates
- 53.54512, -2.62993
- Source
- Historic England listing
Description
This building began as a technical college, later becoming a town hall. It was built between 1901 and 1903 by Briggs and Wolstenholme. Constructed of warm red brick in an English garden wall bond, with matching terracotta dressings and green slate roofs, it occupies a large rectangular footprint on an island site. The architectural style is Flemish Baroque.
The building has a basement, two main floors, and an attic, with a symmetrical five-bay facade (2:2:1:2:2 windows). It features a gabled central section and slightly projecting gabled wings. The basement is faced with terracotta tiling. There is a moulded cornice to the ground floor, a frieze with egg-and-dart enrichment, and a prominent modillioned cornice. The steeply pitched gables include kneelers and finials on the central gable, and open pediments framing colonnaded cupolas on the wings.
A wide flight of steps leads to a large segmental-headed archway with Art Nouveau wrought-iron gates, protected by a porch with blocked Ionic columns. The porch has a dentilled cornice and a segmental broken pediment framing a cartouche; the frieze originally featured raised lettering "MINING TECHNICAL COLLEGE". Above the archway is a transomed six-light window flanked by paired blocked Ionic columns. The central gable contains a round-headed transomed six-light window with a pilastered architrave and triple keystone. Ground floor windows are round-headed one-light windows, while the first floor has two-light mullioned windows with keyed oculi in broken segmental pediments above. Attic dormers are two-light with ogee-shaped pediments. The wings have wide, deeply recessed segmental-headed six-light windows on the ground floor and transomed tripartite windows on the first floor, framed by panelled Ionic pilasters. The left return, facing Hewlett Street, includes a six-bay colonnade of blocked Ionic columns and tall double-transomed windows.
The interior remains uninspected.
The basement area is protected by Art Nouveau railings with square banded piers to gateways, flanking the front entrance and at each end of the sides.
The building forms a group with the Municipal Offices on the north side of Hewlett Street, together representing the most impressive buildings in Wigan town centre.
Local climate
Town Hall (Formerley Wigan and District Mining and Technical College) and Railings sits in a wetter-than-average part of the UK, with an average of 1,040 mm of rain a year. This makes it wetter than 84% of listed buildings in the UK. Its exposure to wind-driven rain is greater than that of 76% of listed buildings.
It experiences an average of 35 freeze-thaw cycles a year, more than 54% of listed buildings. Of these, 18 follow at least 1 mm of rain in the preceding 48 hours. Average temperatures at this location have risen by 0.3°C per decade since 1991.
Averages for 1991–2020; temperature trend 1991–2025. Figures describe the wider area (a grid cell of roughly 10 km), not the individual site. Contains modified Copernicus Climate Change Service information 2026.
More on this building
Sign in or create a free account to unlock:
- Full EPC report — heating system, energy costs, size, glazing, construction etc.
- Sale history — 3 transactions since 2015
- Related listed building consents — 11 applications
- Detailed attributes — period, style, materials, features
- Flood risk assessment
- Radon risk assessment
- Weather exposure and heating demand — rain and frost month by month and year by year, wind direction, solar and humidity
Matched applications, energy data and sale records are assembled automatically and may contain errors. Flag incorrect data.
Similar buildings
The closest matches to this building from all 493,000 UK listed buildings, by architecture, period and materials.
this building 1 similar nearby listed buildings