Post Office Town Hall

The building is a Town Hall and Post Office, constructed in 1854 for Louisa, the widow of Sir William Amcotts Ingilby, intended as the final building on the estate village. It is built of coursed squared gritstone and ashlar, with a grey slate roof. The building comprises a tall single-storey hall, one bay wide and five bays long, with recessed flanking bays. It is designed in an ornate Gothic style. A moulded plinth runs around the base. The main entrance is on the north side with five steps leading up to double-boarded doors within an elaborate battlemented porch that includes angle buttresses, crocketted finials, and decorative squirrel and boar's head motifs. The flanking and first-floor windows feature two cusped lights beneath deep square hoodmoulds, and there is a narrow door into the hall to the far right. A continuous first-floor and eaves string course is present. The building is topped by a battlemented parapet and includes a small chimney stack towards the right. At the rear, five steps lead up to a board door set within a moulded Tudor arch, with a three-light window to the left and three windows above, the upper windows featuring two, one, and two lights respectively. To the left return, the stonework is of rock-faced ashlar, and a large five-light Perpendicular window is flanked by corner turrets. The right return, facing the street, has a central gabled bay with a two-tier canted bay window, displaying cusped lights in two tiers, and a crenellated parapet with the inscription 'HOTEL / DE VILLE / 1854' below. Octagonal, battlemented turrets flank the bay, and the crow-stepped gable is topped with a chimney and features an inscription within a moulded architrave and hoodmould. This inscription reads: 'THIS / TOWN HALL / was commenced by / Sir Wm / Amcotts Ingilby Bar / For the use and benefit / of the inhabitants. It was / completed by his widow / in Honour of his Memory'. The use of the French name 'Hotel de Ville' reflects Sir William's long connection with France and Switzerland. The building incorporates architectural elements from the Castle and the Church, with the crenellations and octagonal buttresses mirroring the roofline of the Castle's earliest sections and the decorated windows and finials closely resembling those on the Church. Squirrel and boar's head motifs are also seen on the Orangery's parapet. The interior was not inspected during a recent survey.