Town Hall and Market

Town Hall and Market

This is a mixed classical building with French Renaissance influences, comprising a town hall with attached market hall. The main facade is constructed in ashlar with an asymmetrical composition reflecting both the sloping site and the building's various functions.

The composition is dominated by a 4-storey clock-tower positioned centrally over the entrance. The main entrance features a segmentally arched opening set within a panelled architrave, with a bracketed lamp and heraldic emblem to the keystone. The recessed panelled doors are topped by a tall fanlight. Above this, the first floor contains a sash window opening onto a balustraded balcony, which is carried on strong moulded brackets. The balcony window has a segmental pediment with paired brackets and pilasters. Paired sash windows sit above a moulded cornice. The upper stage of the tower is emphasised by angle pilasters with foliate capitals, with clock faces set above a panelled apron and geometric punched band course. The tower is surmounted by a French-style pyramidal stone roof with lucarnes, iron-work brattishing and weathervane, and features a disc ornamented entablature.

To the left of the tower, the facade is 2 storeys with bold classical detailing arranged in a 3-bay composition. The first floor is articulated by acanthus capitalled pilasters, with a pediment over the wider central bay above a strongly moulded cornice. Round-headed windows have stencilled key blocks, the central window being of late Renaissance two-light type with oculus, and paired pilasters flank the ends. There is a high panelled blocking course. The ground floor features a deep cornice articulated as 4 bays by plainer pilasters channelled towards the base, with tall windows and a half-glazed entrance to the left.

To the right of the tower, the facade is 3 storeys with simpler detail. The ground floor mirrors the left side with tall windows and renewed glazing. Above the cornice, the elevation is divided into two bays by foliated giant order pilasters uniting the first and second floors. The first floor has intermediate pilasters forming a band of 4 windows retaining their original sashes. The shorter second floor windows have modern glazing. The cornice above the second floor continues that which runs above the first floor of the tower.

The Hall Street elevation is a 3-storeyed, 4-window return of the main entrance range, with similar parapet, cornice and pilaster treatment and shallow second floor windows over first floor sashes. The ground floor cornice returns over tall semicircular headed openings with moulded arches and keystones; the outer openings are doorways, one retaining small-paned glazing and the other blocked.

To the north-east, a 3-bay section in red brick with 2 storeys may represent the remodelling rather than the replacement of an earlier 19th-century market. It has a deep modillion bracketed cornice, full-height pilasters, and round-arched openings with stone hoods to the first floor and gauged brick voussoirs to the ground floor with stone impost bands and sills. The plinth is of rubble with grilled basement lights to the right. The rear return elevation retains a similar round-headed small-pane window beneath 2 blocked windows with finely gauged brick heads. The market was enlarged in 1881 by the addition of a transverse hall to the north-east, which features full-length louvred clerestory. The classical broken-pedimented south front has finely detailed brickwork including dentilled bands at the top over central ocular windows, and 2 tall recessed areas within which are set semicircular arched good entrances with modern doors. A central round-headed window faces the opposite end. The long side elevation has an inserted sandstone plaque dated 1877.

Interior

The entrance and stair hall is floored in Minton tiles. A cantilevered stone dog-leg staircase with open-work cast-iron balustrades featuring floral ornamentation leads to the principal public rooms on the first floor. The Court-Room in the left hand range retains original fittings including many of the benches, the dock with ornamented cast iron railings above panelled woodwork. The Council chamber in the right hand section retains early 20th-century fittings. The Assembly hall in the rear range has a ribbed coffered ceiling.

The ground floor houses the former corn-exchange in the left hand range, with the main market hall to the rear. The market hall interior retains a stone flagged floor and features stone Doric columns, probably remaining from the earlier market building, now carrying I-section cast-iron beams. Two cast-iron columns with simply foliated capitals also remain, though other supports are later replacements.