The Town Hall

The Town Hall

A town hall and police station, later also fire station and now town hall and offices with four shops and enclosed market, built in 1860 with minor late twentieth-century alterations. It was designed by William Ford Poulton (1822-1900) and William Henry Woodman (1822-1879), with Wheeler and Woodroffe as craftsmen. The building is executed in High Victorian Free Gothic style.

The structure is constructed of red brick with blue brick and Bath stone dressings used to polychromatic effect, with steeply pitched slate roofs and brick corbelled chimneys.

The building occupies a triangular plan on an island site. The main range to the north extends two storeys plus attic, with lower wings extending to the south on each side and continuing to a wide one-storey apse that encloses the rear yard. The main range contains a hall, council chamber and ancillary rooms on the first floor, with four shops at ground floor level.

The irregular facades feature a projecting moulded plinth, buttresses, dentilled and moulded string courses at first floor cill level, and dentilled and moulded eaves courses with parapet cornice and coped gables. Most windows are trefoil-headed lancets with stone surrounds, mullions and transoms under polychrome pointed arches.

The north elevation has a central section of four bays defined by full-height buttresses with moulded bases and splayed tops. Each bay contains large pointed arched openings to the ground floor, now fitted with late twentieth-century plain glass shop windows with pointed relieving arches in the tympanum. The first floor has large cross windows under seven-light windows in trefoil stone surrounds, all beneath a steep gable with stone copings. The steep pitched roof carries two tall corbelled chimneys and a central tall fleche with a Tucker of London clock movement, weathercock and iron balustraded platform. The lower apsidal ends to east and west have hipped roofs and steep gables above three-light windows to ground and first floors.

The east and west elevations each have an entrance bay at the north end with double doors under a pointed arch and a tall three-light window at first floor with an iron balcony, topped with a steep Chateau-style roof. The west elevation additionally features a secondary entrance and window to the ground floor Mayor's chamber, a pair of windows above, and a stone plaque reading 'County Police Station' to the centre under a gablet with stone coping. An elaborate oriel at the south end has three lancets with stone ogee arches. The south elevation has a wide one-storey apse with a central wide opening under a steep pointed gable, a deep X-pattern brick frieze, and numerous chimneys, gables and the fleche of the higher ranges visible beyond.

The interior of the main range contains a first floor hall of four bays with an elaborate chamfered hammer-beam truss roof. The roof features carved stone corbel blocks and shields painted with coats-of-arms of past and present High Stewards of Wokingham. A wide carved stone fireplace occupies the centre of the west wall, and a smaller stone fireplace stands in the outside wall to the northeast corner. At the east end is a tall pointed arch with wooden panelled sliding doors opening into a War Memorial room, which contains a wooden carved and moulded memorial on its east wall and a stone fireplace in the corner. At the west end, a small council chamber features a band of wooden panelling carved with the names of past mayors. A corridor running east-west along the hall connects to balconies at opposite ends. The town council office has an oriel window and fireplace. The Mayor's parlour at ground floor occupies the former police superintendent's chamber. Two prison cells with barred iron doors and locks survive.

The Town Hall stands on the site of the Medieval Guildhall, which was demolished in 1858. The new Town Hall was opened on 6 June 1860 by Lord Braybrooke. It was funded in part by money available for a new County Police Station, and the building jointly housed the police until 1905 when a new police station was built. Two of the original three prison cells survive. In 1877, the Fire Brigade housed a horse-drawn fire engine in the covered market, a use which continued until 1969 when the fire station was built. The building also housed a covered market under the arches, now used as individual shops.

The Town Hall has group value with the listed buildings around the perimeter of the site, together with the dated 1881 Drinking Fountain and K6 Telephone Kiosk immediately adjacent to it.