Town Hall

Town Hall, Lancaster

Built 1906-9, designed by Edward Mountford. The exterior stone carving was executed by Gilbert Seale and the woodwork by Waring and Gillow. The building is constructed of sandstone ashlar with steel, brick, and clinker ash concrete used structurally, with slate roofs.

The building has a large rectangular plan with the principal front facing north towards Dalton Square, the west elevation to Thurnham Street, and the south elevation facing George Street, which contains the entrance to the Ashton Hall. The building is 2 and 3 storeys above a basement and is designed in the Edwardian Baroque style.

The entrance front facing Dalton Square is of 11 bays and features a hexastyle portico of giant unfluted Ionic columns raised on sandstone steps. The tympanum of the pediment is filled with limestone figurative sculpture depicting King Edward VII seated in the centre with sceptre and orb. The ground-floor masonry is rusticated and has a round-arched doorway flanked by round-headed niches. Above the balustraded parapet is a clock tower rising behind the roof of the front range. Above the cornice of its lowest stage are aedicules facing each cardinal direction with Tuscan columns. Across each corner angle of the clock tower is a short entablature supported by paired columns. Above the clock stage is a ribbed stone dome with a central finial. The windows throughout are glazing bar sashes.

The long east and west facades are articulated by centrepieces treated as porticoes of engaged columns and triangular pediments, and by segmental pediments towards their outer ends. The south facade has at its centre 3 round-arched doorways to the Ashton Hall, above which are 2 pairs of Tuscan columns in antis, with the lower part of the recess between the columns filled with stonework pierced by round window openings.

The entrance hall contains a marble staircase rising to the principal rooms on the first floor. Spanish red marble is used in the lining of the main corridors on the ground floor. Near the centre of the building is the former Magistrates' Courtroom, which has timber-panelled walls, a magistrates' bench, a dock with direct access to cells below, a saucer dome, and top lighting.

Across the front of the building at first-floor level is a suite of inter-connecting rooms divided by vertically-sliding timber screens: the Banqueting Chamber, Reception Room, and Mayor's Parlour. The walls of these rooms are lined with panelling of Austrian oak and ceiled with segmental stucco tunnel vaults. The Mayor's Parlour contains a bolection-moulded marble fireplace and an overmantel with a portrait of Lady Ashton. Swedish green marble is used to line the principal corridors on the first floor.

The Council Chamber is lined with timber panelling with engaged Corinthian columns, has apsidal ends, a glazed saucer dome, and benches forming an oval.

The Ashton Hall has a segmental vaulted ceiling and galleries on 3 sides. At the west end is the stage with an organ in an oak case carved with the Arms of Lancaster, raised on 4 pairs of unfluted Doric columns.