Mid Bedfordshire District Council Offices, Formerly The Ampthill Rural District Council Offices

Council offices for Ampthill Rural District Council, designed between 1961 and 1964, built from 1963 to 1965, and formally opened in 1967. Designed by Sir Albert Richardson and E A S Houfe. The building is constructed of brown stock brick with stone bands and window surrounds, has a tile roof, and is topped with a copper-clad cupola and skylight. It is three storeys tall, arranged on a nearly symmetrical plan with a central octagonal council chamber positioned behind a central flat-fronted entrance range, flanked by wings of offices either side with projecting fronts. A rear extension of no architectural interest was added later.

The symmetrical main facade is defined by stone bands and cornice, with a three-bay centre and projecting canted wings each of three bays. The centrepiece is surmounted by a cupola of timber clad in copper, with a clock, Swedish-style ball finial and weathervane. The facade features timber small-pane sash windows under gauged brick heads; those to the first floor central bays are set in stone surrounds. The central window is in fact a door with similar small panes, opening onto a balcony positioned over the slightly projecting ground floor and furnished with an elegant iron balustrade featuring delicate spears, roundels and knops. The ceremonial entrance below sits between stone pilasters; those to either side have simple capitals while the central ones have flash gaps. The entrance is marked by varnished timber double doors with glazed panels, brass handles and hand plates beneath timber toplights. The side elevations are similar but simpler, with tripartite windows to the first floor and bands of sash windows to the narrower top storey; some south elevation windows have been renewed in uPVC. The rear of the wings survives, though a new addition has been made to the rear and the original rear elevation is now internal. A lantern over the central council chamber features paired six-light timber windows, a projecting timber cornice and a copper roof with finials.

The interior is accessed through a ceremonial entrance that opens into a long, shallow vestibule with square piers supporting a compartmented ceiling with coving between beams. Two central double doors similar to those external, with brass handles and three glazed panels, originally led into the council chamber. The council chamber was originally double height and extended into the skylight, making it extremely tall, with a public gallery at first-floor level. The chamber has since been filled in at this level but remains an impressive space, with simple round classical—rather Scandinavian in style—mouldings round the base of the skylight, decorative upper sections of giant pilasters to the sides and a niche behind the chairman and council leaders' desk. This area is reached via a double staircase with curved moulded mahogany handrail, Regency-style balusters and cyma-moulded treads. Balustrading continues along the first-floor landing, which has segmental and scored arched ribs dividing it into bays, a motif repeated on the underside of arches over the balustrade. On the second floor, a section of brickwork with windows and gauged brick heads marks an external wall made internal where the building was extended around 1970 in accordance with Richardson's wishes. The rear extension and linking corridors are not of architectural interest.

Sir Albert Richardson was one of the most important architects to build in a traditional style in the twentieth century and one of the last to do so. Besides building extensively in London, primarily for the commercial sector, he served as Professor of Architecture at the University of London from 1919 until 1946 and restored many of the capital's historic buildings after the Second World War. This is a rare civic building by him, created in response to the traditions of the locality in which he made his home in 1919, where he engaged in numerous conservation campaigns. It is one of his few buildings with surviving interiors of architectural interest.