Corn Hall Buildings

Cirencester's Corn Hall, now used as offices and an exhibition hall, was constructed in 1862 by Medland, Maberly and Medland. It is built of limestone ashlar with a parapeted roof and an ashlar stack featuring a moulded top. The building is three storeys and a cellar, with a five-window front.

The first floor has five 2/2-pane sash windows set within moulded stone surrounds with pilasters and carved lead capitals. Round-headed architraves above have keystones depicting carved heads and enclosing carved panels symbolizing music, trade, agriculture, and the arts, with a phoenix over the centre window, carvings reportedly by Forsyth. The second floor mirrors this design with similar sashes and segmental heads within shouldered architraves. The ground floor has four plate glass triple sashes, divided by timber mullions, with architraves featuring waterleaf enrichment and keystones forming hoods over the windows, and squat pilasters with leaf capitals to create an applied arcade.

A central feature of the ground floor is a pair of elaborate cast- and wrought-iron gates within a segmental opening defined by a moulded stone architrave, the spandrels featuring carved decoration. The gates are decorated with corn sheaves. Below ground floor windows, the plinth has a moulded top, while a frieze runs above the ground floor and a moulded cill band extends to form the hood of the central doorcase, featuring a wrought-iron balconette ornamented with corn sheaf decoration. A guilloche frieze runs along the building, and modillion eaves cornices support a balustraded parapet with six dies.

A hall attached to the rear is constructed of coursed squared limestone, covered with a Welsh slate roof with coped verges. It comprises six bays with offset buttresses, plain walls without windows, a blocked oculus in the gable wall towards the Market Place, and remains of a brick stack in one bay to the north-west. A south-east side of the hall has two pairs of double doors, one set within an arched opening with flush voussoirs and a blocked tympanum; this side is accessible from West Way, but the building is largely enclosed by the adjacent King’s Head Hotel.

Inside the hall, the walls are of exposed rubble above a moulded timber dado rail, with mid-19th century architraves. A 20th-century wood strip floor runs throughout, and timber panelling adorns one end wall. A suspended ceiling conceals the original 6-bay roof structure above the original cornice. The roof is elliptical, with timber ribs, a continuous central clerestory, and cast-iron openwork infill to the apex of the trusses. An angled corridor from the Market Place entrance features a single elliptical arch supported on heavy moulded console brackets. The interior of the front range has not been inspected.