Ashby-de-la-Zouch Town Hall is a municipal building in Market Street in Ashby-de-la-Zouch, Leicestershire, England. The structure, which was used as the offices of Ashby-de-la-Zouch Urban District Council, is a Grade II

listed building In the United Kingdom, a listed building or listed structure is one that has been placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Historic Environment Scotland in Scotland, in Wales, and the Northern Irel ...

. The market hall, which is located behind the town hall, is separately listed.

History

In the first half of the 19th century,

petty session Courts of petty session, established from around the 1730s, were local courts consisting of magistrates, held for each petty sessional division (usually based on the county divisions known as hundreds) in England, Wales, and Ireland. The sessio ...

hearings were held in a detached building in the grounds of the George Inn in Market Street. After finding this arrangement unsatisfactory, a group of local business leaders decided to form a company to commission a purpose-built complex for holding public meetings, court hearings and markets. The new complex was designed by Henry Isaac Stevens in the

Italianate style The Italianate style was a distinct 19th-century phase in the history of Classical architecture. Like Palladianism and Neoclassicism, the Italianate style drew its inspiration from the models and architectural vocabulary of 16th-century Italian R ...

, built in ashlar stone and was completed in 1857. The design of the town hall, which was at the front of the complex, involved a symmetrical main frontage with three bays facing onto Market Street. The ground floor, which was rusticated, featured an elliptical opening with a keystone, which provided access to the market hall and was flanked by two sash windows. The first floor was fenestrated by sash windows with

brackets A bracket is either of two tall fore- or back-facing punctuation marks commonly used to isolate a segment of text or data from its surroundings. Typically deployed in symmetric pairs, an individual bracket may be identified as a 'left' or ' ...

supporting cornices; these windows were flanked by

pilaster In classical architecture, a pilaster is an architectural element used to give the appearance of a supporting column and to articulate an extent of wall, with only an ornamental function. It consists of a flat surface raised from the main wal ...

s supporting an entablature, a modillioned cornice and a balustrade. Internally, the principal room was the assembly room on the first floor, which became the local venue for both petty session hearings and county court hearings. In October 1859, it was also consecrated as the home of the local freemasons' lodge in the presence of the Provincial Grand Master,

Earl Howe Earl Howe is a title that has been created twice in British history, for members of the Howe and Curzon-Howe family respectively. The first creation, in the Peerage of Great Britain, was in 1788 for Richard Howe, but became extinct on his ...

. The building was described in Wilson's Imperial Gazetteer as a "noble edifice". The other main part of the complex, the market hall, extended back for 14 bays behind the town hall. Following a significant increase in population, largely associated with the leather working industry, the area became an

urban district Urban district may refer to: * District * Urban area * Quarter (urban subdivision) * Neighbourhood Specific subdivisions in some countries: * Urban districts of Denmark * Urban districts of Germany * Urban district (Great Britain and Ireland) (hist ...

with the town hall as its headquarters in 1894. The town hall then continued to serve as the meeting place of the urban district council and as a local venue for civic events for much of the 20th century, but ceased to be the local seat of government when the enlarged

North West Leicestershire District Council North is one of the four compass points or cardinal directions. It is the opposite of south and is perpendicular to east and west. ''North'' is a noun, adjective, or adverb indicating direction or geography. Etymology The word ''north'' is ...

was formed in 1974. The town hall was subsequently converted for retail use with the first floor room later becoming the showroom of a picture framing business.

References

{{reflist Government buildings completed in 1857 Ashby-de-la-Zouch City and town halls in Leicestershire Grade II listed buildings in Leicestershire