Staines Town Hall

Staines Town Hall is a town hall designed by John Johnson, who was the architect and District Surveyor of East Hackney, between 1879 and 1880. The design was selected following a public competition and features a Renaissance style with Italian and French influences. The building is constructed of white brick with stone dressings and has Doulton-tile bands. It is topped with a fishscale slate roof and has panelled brick chimneystacks. The steep roof includes a platform with a wrought iron handrail and finials.

The town hall is two storeys high with attics, featuring five windows on the front elevation and nine on the side elevation. The layout includes a Board Room or Court Room at the front and a large public hall with a stage behind. The front elevation is adorned with four dormers that have triangular heads, and there is a central clock tower with baroque detailing, a clock face, and a weather vane, all dated to 1880. The building has an openwork brick balustrade with prominent piers at the corners, a cornice with dentils and interlaced decoration, and quoin pilasters. The first floor has five windows arranged in an arcade, with round-headed arches of one recessed order, keystones, and heavily foliated capitals. The windows are plate-glass, and there are medallions in the spandrels, along with a panel featuring a key pattern beneath the windows. A string course and a decorated band run along the building, with four sashes on the ground floor that have foliated imposts. There is a cill band and an additional decorated Doulton tile band above the plinth. A central Tuscan porch supports a balcony above the central upper window. The side elevation features two end pavilions flanking a lower five-bay public hall in the centre, which has an arcaded first floor.

Inside, there are two stone staircases with cast-iron balusters. The Debenham Room, which was formerly the Court Room or Board Room, has a coved and diaphragm-arched ceiling supported by head corbels, plaster ceiling roses, and plastered swag and panel decorations. It also includes a gallery with a carved wooden clock above. The public hall measures 73 feet by 48 feet and features a round-headed arched proscenium, a stage front that was renewed in the later 20th century, a balcony at the rear, and a ribbed ceiling. The original mechanism of the town clock, dating from 1881, was made by Gillette, Bland and Co. of Croydon.