Town Hall & Market Buildings

The Town Hall and Market Buildings is a market hall with a public hall above and an attached office wing, built in 1892. It is constructed from grey rubble stone with ashlar dressings and features steel slate roofs. The building is designed in an L-shape with two storeys and showcases a mix of architectural styles, including a Jacobean main gable, round-arched and segmental-arched windows, and a south end tower topped with a large ogee-domed lantern.

The main range includes the market and public library on the ground floor, with the hall situated above. The west gable is coped and features carved square shoulder blocks with ball finials, kneelers beneath the apex, which has concave curved sides and a semicircular shell pediment with a finial. A date plaque on the apex indicates the year of construction as 1892. The first floor has a triplet of arched windows with 2-light timber tracery, while the ground floor originally had two arched doorways that have since been converted into windows, framed by ashlar quoins. At the north end, there is a one-window projection with a hipped roof and a red brick stack at the apex. The main roof is half-hipped at the rear and includes outside stairs leading to an arched upper door. The sides of the building feature three plain cambered-head sash windows above and various openings below, some of which have been altered. The north side has a slate-roofed shelter supported by thin iron columns, and the south side's angle to the south wing was formerly similarly roofed.

The south wing presents a three-window range to the street, leading to a square south end tower with a steep pyramid roof. This tower has arch-headed dormers with cusped timber single lights and a timber square lantern featuring louvres beneath clock faces, which are topped with overhanging arched timber hoods and an octagonal leaded ogee cap. The upper windows on the west side are segmental-headed 4-pane sashes, with three windows and then one in the tower. The ground floor has four blocked windows and an arched doorway leading to the tower, accompanied by a small window to the right. The south end features a 4-pane window below and an 8-pane window above, which has broken through the ashlar sill band. The building is accented with ashlar quoins and has a chamfered southeast angle.

Old photographs reveal that the tower dormers and the lower part of the clock tower once had a significant amount of ornamental applied timber decoration, which has since been replaced with plain louvres.