Walsall Drill Hall

Walsall Drill Hall

A former drill hall, now a concert venue, built in 1910 to the designs of architects JH Hickton and HE Farmer by builder W Whistance, on the site of an earlier drill hall dating from around 1866. The building has been extended and altered in the mid and late 20th century.

The structure is constructed of red, blue and plum brick laid in English bond with stone dressings and partially rendered walls, beneath a lead and slate roof. The single-storey hall is set back from the street between two-storey blocks of offices and stores facing Whittimere Street and Intown Row. The entire site extends approximately 103 feet in depth. The hall itself has a penthouse roof. A long, narrow room to the south-east of the hall, added between 1887 and 1916, may have originally served as a shooting range.

The principal façades facing Whittimere Street and Intown Row are divided into bays by pilaster buttresses of dark red and blue brick. The bays between have similar brickwork to their lower sections, with lighter red bricks above. The windows are currently boarded, though original wooden sash window frames remain visible from inside.

The north-east front facing Whittimere Street comprises five bays of irregular width. The three bays on the right form a near-symmetrical composition around a central narrow bay containing a ground-floor portal with a segmental arch of gauged brick. The central prominent keystone supports a first-floor canted oriel window of stone with moulded mullions and transom. An oval plaque below the window reads '1910'. The parapet above features a shaped gable displaying the crest of the South Staffordshire Regiment at its centre, surmounted by a crown, beneath which a carved ribbon reads '5TH BATTALION'. The bay to the left has two grouped windows at first-floor level with a door and window at ground floor. The bay to the right contains three first-floor windows and a narrow ground-floor doorway flanked by windows. The two bays to the left have decorative stone and brick patterns to their gables. The wider left bay contains three grouped windows with a window and two later doors at ground floor, while the narrow right bay has mezzanine windows lighting a staircase.

The south-western front to Intown Row originally had three bays arranged symmetrically. At the centre is a single bay with a ground-floor portal and upper oriel window with shaped gable, matching the Whittimere Street front exactly. To the left are two grouped bays onto which a later fire escape door and rendered panel have been superimposed. The right-hand bay was originally similar but had a lower, wedge-shaped block added across it by the time of the 1938 Ordnance Survey map publication. This later extension has five evenly placed bays at first-floor level and three at ground floor to the right, with an open porch featuring a metal post at the left corner at ground-floor level, now boxed in.

The north-eastern flank wall, which previously abutted adjacent buildings, now borders a car park. It is rendered and has buttresses at regular intervals, some of which appear to be later additions.

The central hall contains steel trusses of the Belgian truss type, which was popular at the start of the 20th century and therefore likely date from the 1910 rebuilding. At the south-western end, ground-floor spaces have been reconfigured to accommodate the building's current use as a dance hall and concert venue. At first-floor level at this end is a room extending the full length of the original façade, with wood panelling to dado height on its two longer walls. The oriel window overlooking the street has been boarded up. Adjacent to this room, overlooking the hall, is a deep viewing or band platform with cast and wrought iron balustrade dating from 1910. It is accessed via an open dog-leg staircase with similar balustrade. At the north-eastern end, the first-floor room is similar in size to that at the opposite end. It features dado and picture rails and a suspended ceiling. A canted wooden oriel window at the centre of the south-western wall overlooks the hall.

The narrow room attached to the south-east flank wall has a glazed penthouse to the centre of its roof and a skylight to its southern end.