Truro Crown Courts

Truro Crown Courts

A Courts of Justice building constructed between 1986 and 1988, designed by architects Evans and Shalev with structural engineer Antony Hunt Associates and services engineer Max Fordham and Partners. It stands on a prominent hilltop site overlooking the town and adjoining Victoria Gardens to the west.

The building uses a reinforced concrete frame with troughed floor slabs, clad in light-grey roughcast render incorporating quartz chippings. Plaster is painted white, with painted precast concrete elements, dark red and brown brick dressings, slate, ceramic paviors, hollow glass blocks and ash panelling and fittings.

The plan is compact and asymmetrical, arranged on a 150-millimetre module across two storeys. The principal entrance portico sits on axis with Edward Street. Steps down from the entrance lead to a circulation concourse which encircles a central rotunda to the west and opens onto an enclosed courtyard to the east. The rotunda functions as both a circulation hub and waiting space, containing stairs to the upper level and access to adjoining consultation rooms. To the west are three staggered court rooms: a large crown court, a small crown court and a dual-purpose court, each with separate circulation arrangements for judiciary, jury, defendants and public. The dual-purpose court is served by a smaller rotunda. Judge's chambers and jury retiring rooms lie to the west with views over Victoria Gardens, with the judge's chambers having access to a judges' garden. The public concourse continues eastward as an ambulatory around a courtyard garden in the manner of walled Cornish gardens. The first floor contains administrative facilities, jury accommodation, canteen and conservatory. The defendants' entrance and holding cells are situated at basement level.

Externally, the building appears low-slung and diffuse, emerging organically from the contours of the hillside. The external walls are light grey roughcast render in the Cornish manner, with plinths of dark brown bricks and dark brown brick and moulded precast concrete cornices or coping stones. Perimeter walls are similarly detailed and include spherical downlighters. Door and window lintels are formed of precast concrete, projecting to form stepped and chamfered hoodmoulds. The principal entrance is marked by a steeply pedimented portico echoing the gable ends of adjacent houses on Edward Street. The large and small rotundas are distinguished by drums rising above the flat roofs, terminating in conical slate roofs. The western elevations overlooking Victoria Gardens are sharply angled to reflect the site boundary and articulate the stepped court rooms.

Inside, the public concourse comprises a semi-open flight of steps in red-brown square tiles, separated from the courtyard to the east by an open colonnade. A curved ramp, defined by a solid balustrade and tubular steel handrail, marks the outer wall of the rotunda. The entrance route continues through revolving doors into a reception area. The central rotunda has a ceramic floor in a diaper pattern, low walls of dark red and brown brick, and white plastered walls. A raised drum carried on columns is lit by bands of sand-blasted glass bricks and a lantern set into the apex of the conical roof. Paired flights of stairs with black-brick treads and tubular steel handrails give access to first floor facilities. The smaller rotunda serving the dual-purpose court is similarly detailed. Cellular rooms and corridors borrow natural light through windows of glass blocks, some incorporating the crests of Cornish towns. Skirting rails are chamfered brick in main circulation areas and profiled softwood elsewhere, separated from plaster walls above by a shadow gap. The court rooms have concealed top lighting flanking a panelled ceiling and uplighters to the side walls. Public entrance doors incorporate gridded glass panels. Side walls feature large painted panels, and fixed benches are of grey-painted ash in a gridded design. The judge's bench incorporates circular crests of Cornish towns and sits within a curved, quasi-apsidal recess.

Subsidiary features include a curved garden wall to the west and walled enclosures at the top end of Edward Street. Raised beds and dwarf walls define the southern boundary of the car park to Union Street. External hard landscaping surrounds the courtyard.