County Hall, formerly the Old Sessions House, is a municipal building in Sandling Road in

Maidstone Maidstone is the largest Town status in the United Kingdom, town in Kent, England, of which it is the county town. Maidstone is historically important and lies 32 miles (51 km) east-south-east of London. The River Medway runs through the c ...

Kent Kent is a county in South East England and one of the home counties. It borders Greater London to the north-west, Surrey to the west and East Sussex to the south-west, and Essex to the north across the estuary of the River Thames; it faces ...

, England. The county hall, which is the headquarters of

Kent County Council Kent County Council is a county council that governs most of the county of Kent in England. It is the upper tier of elected local government, below which are 12 district councils, and around 300 town and parish councils. The county council h ...

, 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 ...

History

The original Sessions House, which was designed by

Sir Robert Smirke Sir Robert Smirke (1 October 1780 – 18 April 1867) was an English architect, one of the leaders of Greek Revival architecture, though he also used other architectural styles. As architect to the Board of Works, he designed several major ...

in the

Greek Revival style The Greek Revival was an architectural movement which began in the middle of the 18th century but which particularly flourished in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, predominantly in northern Europe and the United States and Canada, but ...

, was completed in 1824. The original design involved a symmetrical main frontage facing south west; the central section of three bays featured an arched doorway with a

fanlight A fanlight is a form of lunette window, often semicircular or semi-elliptical in shape, with glazing bars or tracery sets radiating out like an open fan. It is placed over another window or a doorway, and is sometimes hinged to a transom. Th ...

flanked by two narrow windows and there was a triple window on the first floor; the end bays of the central section slightly projected forwards. The building was initially used as a facility for dispensing justice but, following the implementation of the

Local Government Act 1888 Local may refer to: Geography and transportation * Local (train), a train serving local traffic demand * Local, Missouri, a community in the United States * Local government, a form of public administration, usually the lowest tier of administrat ...

, which established county councils in every county, it also became the offices and meeting place for

. Internally, the principal room in the Sessions House was the council chamber. Invicta - geograph

The construction of a

façade A façade () (also written facade) is generally the front part or exterior of a building. It is a Loanword, loan word from the French language, French (), which means 'frontage' or 'face'. In architecture, the façade of a building is often t ...

, designed by the county architect, F. W. Ruck, in the

neo-baroque style The Baroque Revival, also known as Neo-Baroque (or Second Empire architecture in France and Wilhelminism in Germany), was an architectural style of the late 19th century. The term is used to describe architecture and architectural sculptur ...

, was completed in November 1913. The design of the facade involved a symmetrical main frontage of nine bays facing south west; the central section of three bays featured a large stone archway with iron gates on the ground floor; there was a triple window on the first floor and two

sash window A sash window or hung sash window is made of one or more movable panels, or "sashes". The individual sashes are traditionally paned window (architecture), paned windows, but can now contain an individual sheet (or sheets, in the case of double gla ...

s on the second floor with pairs of huge

Ionic order The Ionic order is one of the three canonic orders of classical architecture, the other two being the Doric and the Corinthian. There are two lesser orders: the Tuscan (a plainer Doric), and the rich variant of Corinthian called the composite or ...

columns flanking the windows on the second and third floors supporting a

pediment Pediments are gables, usually of a triangular shape. Pediments are placed above the horizontal structure of the lintel, or entablature, if supported by columns. Pediments can contain an overdoor and are usually topped by hood moulds. A pedimen ...

above. A further extension was added in the 1930s. Invicta House, a six-storey hexagonal building was built adjacent to County Hall in order to create extra accommodation capacity in the 1960s. The

Centre for Kentish Studies The Centre for Kentish Studies was a combined county record office and local studies library, based for many years at the County Hall, Maidstone, Kent, UK. The original archive repository, known as the Kent Archives Office, was first established b ...

, established at County Hall in 1933, relocated to the new

Kent History and Library Centre The Kent History and Library Centre is a purpose-built headquarters in James Whatman Way, Maidstone, that opened on 23 April 2012. It has been designed to incorporate under one roof the former Centre for Kentish Studies (the combined county recor ...

in James Whatman Way, which also incorporated the town's former Central Library, in April 2012. In March 2020 the county council announced that it was considering leaving the building and moving to alternative premises which would be less costly to maintain. Works of art in the county hall include a portrait of the Deputy Lieutenant of Kent,

Lionel Sackville-West, 3rd Baron Sackville Lionel Edward Sackville-West, 3rd Baron Sackville (15 May 1867 – 28 January 1928), was a British peer. Sackville-West was the son of the Honourable William Edward Sackville-West, sixth son of George Sackville-West, 5th Earl De La Warr and Lady ...

, by

John St Helier Lander John St Helier Lander (19 October 1868 in Jersey – 12 February 1944 in Witley, Surrey) was a noted portrait painter.Anonymous (1944). Mr. J. St H. Lander. ''The Times'' February 15, 1944 p 6 Born John Helier Lander, he added the ''St.'' to ac ...

and a portrait of the

Governor of Bombay Until the 18th century, Bombay consisted of seven islands separated by shallow sea. These seven islands were part of a larger archipelago in the Arabian sea, off the western coast of India. The date of city's founding is unclear—historians tr ...

George Harris, 4th Baron Harris Colonel George Robert Canning Harris, 4th Baron Harris, (3 February 1851 – 24 March 1932), generally known as Lord Harris, was a British colonial administrator and Governor of Bombay. He was also an English amateur cricketer, mainly active f ...

, by

Hubert von Herkomer Sir Hubert von Herkomer (born as Hubert Herkomer; 26 May 1849 – 31 March 1914) was a Bavarian-born British painter, pioneering film-director, and composer. Though a very successful portrait artist, especially of men, he is mainly remembered fo ...

References

{{reflist Grade II listed buildings in Kent M Government buildings completed in 1824