Town Hall, Municipal Buildings And Library

Oxford's Town Hall is a grand civic building designed in 1891 by architect Henry T. Hare and opened in 1897. It incorporates a 15th-century vaulted undercroft from the former Knapp Hall. A plainer extension was added to the north-west corner in 1932.

Architectural Context and Design

Hare won an open architectural competition in 1891 that attracted over 130 entries. His brief required accommodation for municipal offices, a town hall, council chamber, committee room, mayor's parlour, banqueting hall (assembly room), public library, sessions court (with prisoners' cells beneath), and police headquarters. Influenced by Oxford University's turn away from Gothic toward Renaissance design, Hare adopted an Elizabethan-Jacobean Revival style, creating a building that confidently displays embellished Elizabethan-Renaissance gables and exuberant fenestration facing St Aldates.

Construction and Materials

Externally, the building uses Clipsham stone for dressings and carved work, with Bladon stone rubble on the Blue Boar Street elevation. Rear elevations are red brick. The roof is now covered in Cumbrian slate, which replaced the original failed Northamptonshire Collyweston slates.

Internally, Bath stone walls rise above dados of polished Hopton Wood stone and Black Birdseye marble balustrades and rails. Floors, panelling, and roofs are oak and pine, with flooring supplied by Ashbee and Co of Gloucestershire and woodcarving by G. Hawkings. Stone-carved beasts and cartouches by Butcher and Axtell ornament the walls and staircases of main circulation spaces. Ceilings feature rich plasterwork by George Jackson and Sons. Corridors are often wood-panelled with vaulted stone and plaster ceilings.

The building was constructed using up-to-date structural and ventilating principles. John Chappell of Pimlico undertook the main building work, with Richard Evans of Uppingham as clerk of works. Steel in the roofs came from William Lindsay and Co (London), while floor steel was supplied by Dorman, Long and Co (Middlesbrough). The largest basement room has three steel stanchions. Electricity, a great innovation at the time, was supplied by the Oxford Electric Supply Company and powered 1,100 electric lights plus large ventilation fans.

Plan and Layout

The building occupies a roughly square footprint at the south-west corner of the Carfax crossroads. Major first-floor rooms, marked by tall windows on the St Aldates frontage, were placed centrally: the Main Hall (Town Hall) and Assembly Room. City Council offices and the Council Chamber lie to the left (north). Court and police functions were positioned to the right of the entrance hall, with the public library occupying the corner. Ground-floor police headquarters and library were accessed from Blue Boar Street.

The plan and original fixtures survive little altered despite some changes of use. The former Reference Library now serves as a public meeting and exhibition room called the Old Reference Library. The Museum of Oxford occupies basement to elevated ground-floor levels in the south-west corner (once the public library). The Print Room and other offices are housed east of the Police Drill corridor behind the St Aldates frontage.

Exterior

The main stone façade to St Aldates displays Hare's flamboyant Elizabethan-Jacobean style. The north-west corner extension of 1932, reaching to the Carfax corner, is stone-faced and consciously austere.

Interior Spaces

Entrance Hall and Grand Staircase

The entrance hall features a central grand staircase leading to a first-floor landing hall, both with stone and plaster detailing in a broadly Jacobean style. The landing hall provides access to the principal first-floor public rooms.

Main Hall (Town Hall)

To the east lies the Main Hall, much the largest room in the building. It has an apsed east end at the stage, behind which stands the Henry (Father) Willis organ built in 1896-7 in a plain Rococo-style case. Balconies with heavily enriched stucco fronts line the north, west, and south walls. The room is rich in carving, with a heavily plastered and decorated ceiling. Allegorical sculpted figures by F.E.E. Schenck in the spandrels depict subjects such as Sloth and Industry.

Assembly Room

West of the landing hall is the Assembly Room, lit from the west by three tall, wide, multi-leaded windows. Carved wood panelling covers the walls to about half their height, with plain ashlar walling rising to ceiling level above. A decorative fireplace dates from 1895. Pillars of Fosterley marble from County Durham support a musician's gallery. Beneath this gallery, the fireplace hearth contains red lustre William de Morgan tiles and a cast iron fireback dated 1896. The most ornate plasterwork appears in the coved ceiling and at the north and south ends of the room.

Council Chamber

North of the landing hall is the Council Chamber. Three seats on the left are mounted on a dais for the Lord Mayor (centre), Deputy Lord Mayor (right), and Chief Executive (left). A carved wooden canopy rises above the central seat, which has a high back inset with the painted arms of the city. Directly opposite the Lord Mayor's seat at the far end is the Sheriff's seat with a plain, high curved back. A public gallery sits behind the Sheriff's seat. Walls combine panelling and ashlar stone. The ceiling is divided into panels by a grid of timber beams supported on carved stone corbels with pendants at the intersections. Within the coved panels are plasterwork shields, each bearing a different sign of the zodiac surrounded by mantling.

Lord Mayor's Parlour and Committee Room

In the north-west corner of the 1890s building, between the Council Chamber and Assembly Room, are the Lord Mayor's Parlour and the Committee Room, both overlooking St Aldates. The panelled Lord Mayor's Parlour incorporates a Jacobean overmantle from the old parlour of the Guildhall.

Old Reference Library

South of the Assembly Room is the Old Reference Library. On its eastern side it retains the galleried spaces and principal bookcases from the original lending library. It has a lofty ceiling with heavily moulded oak timber beams and carved bosses bearing painted shields. The timber ceiling ribs are thin by comparison. The walls are painted with no decorative plaster.

Courtroom

The south-east quarter of the first floor is occupied by the Courtroom, whose judicial functions have eased and which is now used for meetings. Built as the Magistrates Court, it has also served as the Court of Quarter Sessions and as a Crown Court. It is an austere room befitting its original function, with dark wall panelling and fixed benches and furniture. The dock connects by stairs to cells beneath. Stained glass in the south wall displays the Royal Arms with the Arms of Henry I to the left and the Arms of Richard I to the right.

Judge's Room

The Judge's Room lies off the south-west corner of the Courtroom and overlooks Blue Boar Street. It has wood-panelled walls and a carved stone chimneypiece of classical design. The ceiling comprises decorative plaster panels set between moulded timber beams.

Medieval Undercroft

Some 37 metres south of High Street, beneath and accessed from the Town Hall, is a probable 15th-century three-bayed quadripartite vaulted space in rubble and ashlar comprising the undercroft to the former Knapp Hall. Hollow-chamfered ribs spring from shafts with moulded capitals and chamfered bases. In the west wall is an original doorway, now blocked, with chamfered jambs and a two-centred head.

Historical Context

The site was previously occupied by an 18th-century Town Hall and other buildings including the Corn Exchange, Nixon's School, and houses. The Town Hall of 1897 expresses civic pride and aspirations both outwardly in its architectural form and especially internally through its high-quality materials, fixtures, and fittings, all surviving very well.

The surviving part of the unlisted Ebor House in Blue Boar Street, which was incorporated into and extended for modern Blue Boar Street offices, is not covered by the listing.