The Municipal Offices are located on Queen Victoria Road in High Wycombe,

Buckinghamshire Buckinghamshire (), abbreviated Bucks, is a ceremonial county in South East England that borders Greater London to the south-east, Berkshire to the south, Oxfordshire to the west, Northamptonshire to the north, Bedfordshire to the north-ea ...

, England. The structure is used as the High Wycombe local area office of Buckinghamshire Council.

History

Since the town became a municipal borough, under the name of Chepping Wycombe, on 1 January 1836, the borough council had always held its meetings in the 18th century guildhall in the High Street, whilst the council's staff were accommodated in various rented offices around the town. When the council decided to proceed with building its own municipal offices and council chamber in the early 1930s, it chose not to use the site north of High Wycombe Town Hall which had been reserved for that purpose in the 1903 design for that building. Instead, it built a separate building on the opposite side of Queen Victoria Road, facing the town hall. The new building was designed by Richard Greaves Brocklehurst and

Charles Cowles-Voysey Charles Cowles-Voysey (24 June 1889 – 10 April 1981) was an English architect. Career Charles Voysey studied at the Architectural Association School and the UCL Bartlett School of Architecture. Between 1909 and 1912 he was articled to Horace ...

in the neo-Georgian style. The foundation stone for the new building was laid on 16 May 1931 and it was officially opened on 21 June 1932, being given the name "Municipal Offices". The design involved a symmetrical main frontage with eleven bays facing onto Queen Victoria Road. The central section of five bays, which slightly projected forward, featured a doorway with an

architrave In classical architecture, an architrave (; from it, architrave "chief beam", also called an epistyle; from Greek ἐπίστυλον ''epistylon'' "door frame") is the lintel or beam that rests on the capitals of columns. The term can ...

flanked by

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 either side; there was a full-length wrought iron balcony together with five French doors with architraves on the first floor. The wing sections featured doorways with architraves in the central bays and there were sash windows with keystones in the other bays on the ground floor and in the bays on the first floor. At roof level, each of the three sections had its own hipped roof with the central roof advanced from the wing sections. Internally, the principal room was the council chamber. The architects were awarded a bronze medal by the Royal Institute of British Architects for the design of the municipal offices. High Wycombe Borough Council was abolished in 1974 under the

Local Government Act 1972 The Local Government Act 1972 (c. 70) is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that reformed local government in England and Wales on 1 April 1974. It was one of the most significant Acts of Parliament to be passed by the Heath Gov ...

. The successor body, Wycombe District Council, used the municipal offices as its headquarters, substantially extending the building to the rear and renaming it the "District Council Offices". Following further local government reorganisation in 2020, the building became the High Wycombe local area office of Buckinghamshire Council.

References

{{reflist High Wycombe Government buildings completed in 1932 City and town halls in Buckinghamshire