Town Hall with Attached Railings

Town Hall with Attached Railings, Burnley

This town hall, built between 1884 and 1888, was designed by the architectural firm Holtom & Fox of Dewsbury. It originally served as a municipal complex housing the town hall, police station, magistrate's court, and public baths, though the police station and court are now used for storage and the baths were demolished in 1975. The building is constructed of sandstone ashlar with slate roofs and a copper-clad dome, designed in the Renaissance style.

The exterior presents a large irregular rectangular plan across three storeys over basements, with a central turret and a symmetrical arrangement of windows in a 1:3:1:3:1 pattern. The basement and ground floor feature channelled rustication, and each floor is articulated by a plain frieze and cornice—the first-floor cornice is dentilled while the second-floor cornice is modillioned. Balustraded parapets run along the roofline.

The centrepiece is exceptionally ornate. The entrance comprises a raised portal with set-in Ionic columns of polished pink granite bearing sandstone capitals, flanking a richly-carved round-headed archway with set-in Ionic colonnettes and elaborate wrought-iron gates. At first-floor level, a segmental balustraded balcony with hexastyle composite columns (paired and single) frames a round-headed doorway with French windows. The second floor features a simpler tetrastyle Tuscan columned balcony flanked by carved cartouches, with a carved pediment and triangular parapet containing roundels. The clock turret above the roof has chamfered corners, a frieze enriched with festoons, a moulded cornice, and large circular clock-faces beneath a copper dome topped with a wooden domical finial. Similar turrets were designed for the end bays but were never built.

The projected end bays display first-floor balconies with balustrades and composite-columned architraves bearing carved segmental pediments, flanked by short coved niches. The second floor contains pilastered windows with eared architraves, again flanked by niches. The three-bay intermediate ranges have recessed square-headed windows at ground level, colonnades of composite semi-columns at first-floor level enclosing tall round-headed windows with balustrades, and shorter square-headed pilastered windows with balustrades at second floor.

The entrance steps are protected by convex balustrades, from each of which run elaborate wrought-iron railings protecting the basement area.

Interior

The ground-floor entrance lobby retains a wooden former enquiry kiosk on its left side. The entrance hall and the first-floor concourse area of the civic suite feature original mosaic floors by Maw & Co. of Shropshire. The dados comprise glazed tiles in buff and green with brown and red bands, while tall windows contain stained and painted glass. Tuscan columns stand at ground-floor level and Ionic columns at first-floor level. An open-well stone staircase with cast-iron newels and foliated wrought-iron balustrading rises through the building, with elaborately carved architraves framing doorways throughout.

The council chamber contains a very fine coved and coffered ceiling, with the panels of the coving filled with coats of arms of principal Lancashire towns. A painted lettered frieze runs around the entire room recording major dates in Burnley's civic history, beginning with "1293-4 first charter for market and fair" and continuing through to "1901 tramways acquired", though wall cladding and furnishings have been altered.

The Mayor's Parlour and Reception Room retain their original panelling, doors, fireplaces, moulded plaster cornices, and ceilings. The former magistrates' court to the rear, latterly used as a club room, now lacks furnishings and fittings except for a panelled reredos to the Bench and a coved ceiling with a large rectangular skylight. Original police cells survive on the floor below, some unaltered.

The building forms a group with the adjoining Mechanics building to the right.