The Old Town Hall is a former municipal building in the High Street in

Epping, Essex Epping is a market town and civil parish in the Epping Forest District of Essex, England. Part of the London metropolitan area, metropolitan and Urban area, urban area of London, it is 17 miles (27 km) northeast of Charing Cross. It is surrounde ...

, a town in England. The building, which briefly served as the headquarters of Epping Urban District Council, now accommodates a firm of estate agents.

History

In the mid-19th century, a group of local businessmen decided to form a company, to be known as the Epping Town Hall Company, to finance and commission a town hall for the town. The new building was designed 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 combined its inspiration from the models and architectural vocabulary of 16th-century Ita ...

, built in red brick at a cost of about £1,700 and was completed in 1863. The site they selected was on the southeast side of the High Street. The design involved a single-storey entrance block of three bays, facing onto the High Street, and a full-height main block with a gable stretching back behind the entrance block. The first two bays of the entrance block were fenestrated by segmental headed

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 windows, but can now contain an individual sheet (or sheets, in the case of double glazing) of glass. History ...

s, while the right-hand bay featured a round-headed doorway flanked by a pair

Doric order The Doric order is one of the three orders of ancient Greek and later Roman architecture; the other two canonical orders were the Ionic and the Corinthian. The Doric is most easily recognized by the simple circular capitals at the top of t ...

pilaster In architecture, a pilaster is both a load-bearing section of thickened wall or column integrated into a wall, and a purely decorative element in classical architecture which gives the appearance of a supporting column and articulates an ext ...

s supporting an

architrave In classical architecture, an architrave (; , also called an epistyle; ) is the lintel or beam, typically made of wood or stone, that rests on the capitals of columns. The term can also apply to all sides, including the vertical members, ...

and a keystone. Internally, the principal room was the main assembly hall, which could seat 500 people and was used for a variety of meetings, concerts, and other public events. After the Epping Union and Rural Sanitary Authority was succeeded by Epping Urban District Council in 1896, the council decided to use the town hall as its offices and meeting place. However, the company that had developed the town hall got into financial difficulties and the council had to use temporary facilities for its meetings, before relocating to Hawthorn Lodge on the opposite side of the High Street. In 1912, the building was sold for alternative use and was converted into the Picture House cinema, seating 419 people. A large hoarding was erected on the roof of the entrance block advertising the latest film available for viewing. The company which had developed the town hall was then dissolved in May 1915. By the early 1920s, the cinema was part of the Shipman & King circuit, and in 1924 it was renamed the Picture Palace. In 1935, it suffered a major fire, but was rebuilt and reopened the following year as the Empire Cinema. The cinema closed in 1954, and the facade was rebuilt with a modern shopfront allowing the building to become a

Tesco Tesco plc () is a British multinational groceries and general merchandise retailer headquartered in the United Kingdom at its head offices in Welwyn Garden City, England. The company was founded by Jack Cohen (businessman), Sir Jack Cohen in ...

supermarket. The entrance building was occupied by a photography shop, "The Portrait Studio", in the early 21st century, then by an education centre for young people known as "The Box" from around 2010, and then by a firm of estate agents, Mullucks, from about 2015. Offices were installed in the former assembly hall.

References

{{reflist Epping, Essex City and town halls in Essex Government buildings completed in 1863