Town Hall

Town Hall, Saffron Walden

A town hall built in 1761 with substantial additions by E Burgess in 1879. The building is constructed of red brick, stone and imitation timber framing, with peg tile and slate roofs. It has a rectangular plan with a projecting porch, rising to three storeys with an attic.

The north front elevation features a prominent porch built in 1879, superimposed over the original 1761 structure. The porch ground floor comprises a triple arcade in stone with 2-centred arches and octagonal piers topped with leaf capitals, flanked by side arches in loggia style. Behind this arcade is a central mullioned and transomed window of 6 lights, with entry doors either side in square frames featuring inner lancet mouldings. The doors are 2-leaved, boarded timber with shallow 2-centred arched heads. The porch's first floor and attic are timber-framed and jettied over the ground floor, with a gable facing the street. Heavy framing with ogee braces and pilasters supports a projecting gable. Below this sits a tripartite canted central first-floor window with frieze lights either side and a supporting carved corbel bracket; the window is mullioned and transomed with 2x2 lights. The gable features a 6-light frieze window with ovolo-moulded mullions, serpentine bracing below and a folded-leaf band above, surmounting a heraldic panel. The porch sides each have a 4x2 light mullioned and transomed window on the first floor. All porch windows contain small leaded panes of coloured glass in geometrical patterns.

Flanking the porch on each side are 2 bays of the earlier town hall, each 3 storeys with modillioned eaves cornice and parapet, with slate roofs to the east and peg-tiled hipped roofs to the west. A projecting central bay denotes the original building's centre. The ground floor wings are early 19th-century shops, each comprising 3 bays with 4 Ionic columns supporting an entablature. The east shop has a C20 fully glazed door in its central entrance bay and C20 plain glazing elsewhere. The first floor of the wings has windows with flat arches and voussoired stepped keystones; the western wing has 3x4 pane sashes, the eastern wing simpler 2x2 pane sashes. Second-storey windows feature flat refined voussoirs with 3x2 pane sashes.

The south elevation to Butcher Row is entirely late 19th-century work in red brick with stone dressings and a peg-tiled roof, with a stack at the western end. To the east is a gabled end of a timber-framed unit, double jettied to Market Street, with a prominent external central red brick stack. The principal range has a row of five first-floor windows, each mullioned and transomed with 3x3 lights and leaded coloured panes. The central ground floor features a doorway with a high moulded label, over-light of 3 arched lights with coloured bulls-eye leaded panes, flat chamfered and moulded 4-centred arch, and swan and lion decorated spandrels. An iron spear-head gate leads to an inner porch with a boarded, battened and studded door. To the west are 3 plain segment-headed windows with mullioned and transomed wooden frames of 3x2 lights in plain glass. To the east are 2 windows similar to those on the first floor in plain glass, one set in the base of the stack. Upper ground floor to the west of the stack has a plain fire-escape door with iron stairway.

The east elevation to Market Street comprises 2 principal units to north and south with a linking bay, where the site falls from north to south. At the north end is a 3-bay side elevation of the 1761 town hall, 3 storeys with modillioned eaves cornice and parapet carried around from the north elevation. A tall C19 stack rises behind the parapet. Ground floor has 3 plain windows with C20 glazing. The first floor has a central window recess which is blind; outer windows have 3x4 pane sashes with glazing bars to the north, and a C20 2-light casement to the south. Second-floor windows are 3x2 pane sashes with glazing bars on both sides. The brickwork has scored pointing, and the Ionic columns and entablature from the shopfront to the north continue round the northeast corner. To the south is an inset 2-storey C19 linking bay with parapet and simple cornice, featuring ground and first-floor segment-headed 2-light windows with leaded panes. The southern end comprises a late C19 double jettied 3-storey range, timber-framed with a peg-tiled roof and timbered end gable of the range to Market Row above, with a prominent stack at the south end gable. The ground floor is red brick with stone dressings, containing two 4-light mullioned windows with frosted leaded panes, and a central panel recording the presentation of the building by Alderman Gibson in 1878. The first floor has a moulded jetty and bressumer, with 3 oriel mullioned windows on brackets with coloured leaded glazing of 3, 4 and 3 lights respectively. The second floor features two 5-light mullioned frieze windows under the eaves, with ovolo-moulded leaded coloured panes.

Internally, the principal room on the first floor of the north front porch has a ceiling of simplified hammer-beam form. A grand imperial-style stairway of oolitic limestone rises from the front door, supported on longitudinal and transverse arches with double-chamfered piers and arches decorated with stops. Stair handrails are brass on short bobbin balusters. The stair hall ceiling features Jacobean-style panelled plasterwork.