Staines Town Hall

TQ0371 MARKET SQUARE, Staines

990/9/101 Staines Town Hall

4.6.73

GV II

Town hall. Designed by John Johnson, architect and District Surveyor of East Hackney 1879-80, following a public competition, in a Renaissance style with Italian and French motifs. White brick and stone dressings with Doulton-tile bands. Fishscale slate roof with panelled brick chimneystacks. Steep roof with platform, wrought iron handrail with finials. Two storeys and attics: five windows to front elevation, nine windows to side elevation. Plan form has first floor Board Room/Court Room at front and large full-height public hall with stage behind. Front elevation has four dormers with triangular heads. Central clock tower at front of building with baroque detail, clock face and weather vane, dated AD 1880. Openwork brick balustrade with exaggerated piers to corners. Cornice with bands of dentils and interlaced decoration. Quoin pilasters. Five windows to first floor forming an arcade. Round headed arches of one recessed order with keystones and heavily foliated capitals. Plate-glass windows. Medallions in spandrels. Panel with key pattern under windows. String course and decorated band. Four sashes to ground floor with foliated imposts. Cill band and further decorated (Doulton tile) band above plinth. Central Tuscan porch supporting balcony to central upper window. Side elevation in form of two end pavilions with lower five bay public hall in centre with arcaded first floor. INTERIOR: 2 stone staircases with cast-iron balusters. Debenham Room, former Court Room or Board Room, has coved and diaphragm-arched ceiling on head corbels, plaster ceiling roses, plastered swag and panel decoration and gallery with carved wooden clock above. Room below is public hall 73 feet by 48 feet with round-headed arched proscenium, stage front renewed in later C20, balcony to rear and ribbed ceiling. Original mechanism of the town clock of 1881 by Gillette, Bland and Co. of Croydon.

Listing NGR: TQ0337971482