Wetherby Town Hall And Attached Front Wall

The building is a town hall, now used as assembly rooms, with an attached front wall, constructed in 1845 and altered in the 20th century. It was built at a cost of £1,300 and originally served multiple purposes, including as a county court, assembly room, reading room, house of detention, and accommodation for the Church School.

The town hall is built of deeply-coursed, dressed sandstone, with a Welsh slate roof. It has a T-shaped plan, featuring a 1:3:1-bay entrance front and a taller, 4 x 2-bay range at the rear. The design is in a Classical style, with symmetrical front and rear elevations. The entrance front includes a 1-storey porch with a central projection containing a double door and a margin-glazed overlight, flanked by margin-glazed casements. The porch is set between rusticated pilasters, and the doorway is topped by a plain frieze and pediment containing a clock set in an arcaded ashlar panel. The side bays are set back, with inserted windows featuring unequally-hung 8-pane sashes. The first floor has a sill band and three sashes with glazing bars, set in ashlar surrounds. A modillioned wooden cornice acts as a gutter and rises as a pediment over the centre. An apex stack has twin flues linked by a keyed arch. The roof is hipped. Low quadrant walls with end piers and massive copings flank the entrance front. At the rear, rock-faced and rusticated quoins are visible, along with a sill band to 20th-century windows with patterned glazing bars. The first floor also has a sill band to round-headed sashes with glazing bars, set in recesses with corbelled impost strings, archivolts, and large keystones. The eaves are similarly detailed to the front, and the roof is hipped with ridge ventilators. A clock is set within an architrave on the left return, mirroring the rear design. Alterations to the right-hand return include altered ground-floor windows and a blocked doorway. Interior features include a main assembly room with a coved ceiling and a boss decorated with acanthus and palm-leaf motifs.

Early drawings of the building show a more delicate eaves detail, and early photographs reveal that the rear originally had mullioned windows, and the entrance front's left return had small windows flanking the door, likely for the detention cells. It occupies an island site and forms the focal point of the town.