The Guildhall And Town Hall With Attached Coach House

The Guildhall and Town Hall, with an attached coach house, were built in 1881 and 1887. The Town Hall was designed by Otho B Peter of Launceston and G Hine of Plymouth. The building is constructed primarily of polychrome slatestone rubble with granite and polyphant stone dressings, featuring dry slate roofs with coped gable ends, crested clay ridge tiles, moulded stacks, and original cast-iron rainwater-heads and downpipes.

The building has a large, irregular plan with a central front tower between a small hall to the left and a larger hall to the right. It is in a mixed Gothic Revival style. The tower is three-stage, topped with a pyramidal roof, a weather-vane, and an embattled parapet with a bracketed cornice. The main elevations are tall and single-storey. The symmetrical three-window gabled front on the left has four-centred arched windows, each with three stepped pointed-arched lights and double transoms. The tower is flanked by two low two-light bays, and the upper stage of the tower has three taller louvred lights. The second stage of the tower features a clock and a niche with a piper. A moulded four-centred arched doorway is approached by a flight of granite steps.

The symmetrical gable end of the large hall on the right has three stepped ventilators to the gable, overlooking very large seven-light four-centred arched windows with a frieze of quatrefoils over the lower lights and two transoms above. A sill string connects to flanking panelled buttresses, and a four-centred arched doorway is set back on the right. The rear of the building has a two-window range with three-light transomed windows, some of which break the eaves and are under hipped roofs.

The tower has an embattled round stair turret with a conical slate roof and a finial, and a clockface to the bell-stage opening. The three-bay right-hand return has three-light windows with four-centred arched lights, while a porch with a Tudor arched doorway is located in the second bay. A small linking wing at the rear connects to the coach house on the right, and features a three-light gable window with four-centred arched lights above a large carriage doorway with 20th-century doors.

Inside the Guildhall is an arch-braced roof supported by corbels, with diagonal ceiling boards and a chimney-piece dated 1881, bearing a moulded cornice. Corner shafts are present at the principal window and there is high dado panelling. The large town hall has a similar roof structure, but with tie rods and a moulded cornice. Other interior features include some geometric polychrome tiled floors and pointed-arched doorways to corridors, as well as square hoods over the hall doorways.