Town Hall

Hitchin Town Hall

Hitchin Town Hall, constructed in 1900-1901, stands on Brand Street as a replacement for the earlier Town Hall of 1840. It was designed by Edward Mountford and T Geoffry Lucas, renowned architects in municipal and domestic design, for Hitchin Urban District Council. The building was erected on land donated in 1897 by local dignitaries Frederic Seebohm and William and Alfred Ransom, at a cost of £7,300. It combines council offices with a public hall. The structure was extended to the east in the later twentieth century, linking it to the former Workmen's Hall and Gymnasium of 1841.

The building is constructed in red brick laid in English bond, with rendered details and stone dressings. It comprises an approximately rectangular plan with a slightly projecting front office range and late twentieth-century extensions.

The front office range displays Neo-Georgian styling with Wrenaissance influence, while the rear hall is executed in the Arts and Crafts style. The office range sits on a stone-capped brick plinth with stone quoins to the corners. The hipped, tile-covered roof features a central cupola, an end stack at the east elevation, and a stair turret beneath a gablet at the west elevation.

At the centre of the front elevation, a slightly projecting bay of one opening is framed by pilasters and clad in stone. A ground-floor central arched entrance with enlarged keystone contains recessed late twentieth-century glazed and timber doors with small-paned leaded lights above. Iron lantern brackets and suspended lanterns flank the arch. The pilasters are carved with the letters HU and DC, with AD and MCM (Roman numerals for the date) beneath. At first-floor level, a pair of lancet windows with small-paned leaded lights and moulded stone lintel sits beneath a pediment containing a central carved coat of arms and foliate motifs. The pediment and eaves rest on modillions. On either side of the central bay are three windows at ground and first-floor levels. Four ground-floor windows are original mullion windows with small-paned leaded lights, two of which to the left of centre have inserted transoms. All first-floor windows are mullion and transom windows with leaded lights.

The rear hall has a tiled gable roof and rough-cast render at upper levels. Five bays long with a rectangular plan, it lies at right angles to the front range. Each bay is defined by half-buttresses and contains a semi-circular or Diocletian window with two mullions beneath the eaves. Two tile-hung dormers with timber casement windows puncture each roof pitch. The west elevation features a central ground-floor opening with stone quoins, partly glazed doors, and a canted pent roof. Behind is a remodelled brick extension with hipped roofs, partly constructed in the same style as the hall, accommodating the stage and back rooms. Late twentieth-century flat-roofed extensions to the east, of single and two-storey construction, obscure the east elevation of the hall and lack historic interest. The linked gymnasium, much altered, has a half-hipped slate roof with dentil cornice, contrasting brickwork, and replacement windows.

The interior of the office range centres on a ground-floor foyer with contemporary quarry tiles, plain dado rail and cornices, and a wooden plaque commemorating Hitchin men's honours in World War I. A simple enclosed staircase rises to the first floor. Rooms accessed from the staircase are plain in decoration, served by corridors with arched openings, plain dado rails and cornices. The Lucas Room on the first floor has two entrance doors with moulded architrave. An east-end fireplace features deeply coloured tile and carved wood surround, with a plaster cartouche above, thought to represent the Lucas family crest, surrounded by foliate and shell motifs. Deep cornices, some with egg and dart ornament, feature throughout.

Double doors from the foyer open into the multi-functional hall. This space possesses an adjustable sprung wooden floor contemporary with construction and a barrel-vaulted ceiling with prominent concrete beams rising from columns with elaborate consoles to the cornice. Details on the consoles represent rose and lavender, crops historically grown locally for horticultural and pharmaceutical industries. Contemporary brass light fittings remain. The stage to the north has a simply moulded proscenium arch with remodelled rooms beneath. A first-floor gallery supported on three slender columns occupies the south side, with separate access at first-floor level. An inserted double opening on the east side leads to a remodelled corridor partly integrated into the later twentieth-century extensions, which provide new entrance facilities and link the hall with the former Workmen's Hall and Gymnasium, now serving as a late twentieth-century sports facility with subdivided former hall space.

A small rear extension was built or remodelled during the interwar years on land donated by Dr Oswald Foster. In the 1960s, the hall was extended to the south-east, linking it with the adjoining Workmen's Hall and Gymnasium and resulting in exterior and interior remodelling. The building survives largely intact in both exterior and interior, with the Lucas Room distinguished by its decorative plasterwork. The Town Hall holds group value with the designated old Town Hall, the contrasting architecture of the two buildings demonstrating the evolution of the building type from the mid-nineteenth century onwards.