Clacton Town Hall

Clacton Town Hall is a building completed in 1931 to the designs of Sir Brumwell Thomas, constructed as a town hall incorporating a theatre and originally housing a library. It is built in a Neo-Georgian style using brown brick in English bond with stone dressings and hipped or mansard pantiled roofs.

The building is square in plan, with a central vestibule, the theatre located behind, a council chamber and committee rooms to the south, and originally a library to the north, which now serves as a theatre bar. The most prominent feature of the east front is a massive, three-bay, pedimented portico. The pediment has a deeply carved stone wreath flanked by swags whilst engaged Composite fluted columns and Doric piers are at the sides. Three round-headed arches, each with keystones, impost blocks and carved swag decoration, lead to street level steps and three round-headed entrances with double doors. Flanking wings, one storey high with attics, are five bays wide, with a stone parapet, cornice, and plinth. They contain curved dormers with 12-pane sashes. Below are 18-pane sashes. These wings terminate in one-bay corner pavilions with hipped roofs and 18-pane sashes with Diocletian windows above, set in moulded architraves with brackets flanked by pilasters. The south front is similar in design, but features a central, five-light curved bay. The north front mirrors this, incorporating a central doorcase with cornice, moulded architrave, double doors, and a rectangular fanlight with intersecting arches, originally serving as the library entrance. The west front has a central fly tower to the theatre, featuring blank square window openings above the theatre roofline and a tall, round-headed opening with impost blocks that cleverly disguises a scenery door.

The interior includes a vestibule with a coffered barrel-vaulted ceiling. The theatre itself has five bays, also with a coffered barrel-vaulted ceiling, round-headed arches to the sides, and a cambered proscenium arch bearing a carved municipal coat of arms. Further rooms comprise a council chamber, committee rooms, and a mayor’s parlour, all featuring original joinery. Corridors have round-headed arches and marble floors.