The Old Town Hall is a municipal building in the Market Square in

Midhurst Midhurst () is a market town, parish and civil parish in West Sussex, England. It lies on the River Rother inland from the English Channel, and north of the county town of Chichester. The name Midhurst was first recorded in 1186 as ''Middeh ...

West Sussex West Sussex is a county in South East England on the English Channel coast. The ceremonial county comprises the shire districts of Adur, Arun, Chichester, Horsham, and Mid Sussex, and the boroughs of Crawley and Worthing. Covering an a ...

, England. The building, which is managed by the Midhurst Town Trust, 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 I ...

History

The

member of parliament A member of parliament (MP) is the representative in parliament of the people who live in their electoral district. In many countries with Bicameralism, bicameral parliaments, this term refers only to members of the lower house since upper house ...

for

Guildford Guildford () is a town in west Surrey, around southwest of central London. As of the 2011 census, the town has a population of about 77,000 and is the seat of the wider Borough of Guildford, which had around inhabitants in . The name "Guildf ...

, Sir Anthony Brown, donated a site in the Market Square to the burgesses of Midhurst for the purposes of erecting a market hall in 1551. The building was designed in the

neoclassical style Neoclassical architecture is an architectural style produced by the Neoclassical movement that began in the mid-18th century in Italy and France. It became one of the most prominent architectural styles in the Western world. The prevailing style ...

, built in buff brick with an

ashlar Ashlar () is finely dressed (cut, worked) stone, either an individual stone that has been worked until squared, or a structure built from such stones. Ashlar is the finest stone masonry unit, generally rectangular cuboid, mentioned by Vitr ...

front and was completed later that year. It was arcaded on the ground floor, so that markets could be held, with an assembly room on the first floor. The design involved a symmetrical main frontage facing west towards Church Hill; there were three openings on the ground floor, which was rusticated, and there were 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 windows, but can now contain an individual sheet (or sheets, in the case of double glazing) of glass. History ...

s on the first floor. Full-height

Doric order The Doric order was 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 ...

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 were installed at the corners and the roof was

hipped In vertebrate anatomy, hip (or "coxa"Latin ''coxa'' was used by Celsus in the sense "hip", but by Pliny the Elder in the sense "hip bone" (Diab, p 77) in medical terminology) refers to either an anatomical region or a joint. The hip region ...

and covered with

slate Slate is a fine-grained, foliated, homogeneous metamorphic rock derived from an original shale-type sedimentary rock composed of clay or volcanic ash through low-grade regional metamorphism. It is the finest grained foliated metamorphic ro ...

. A

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maker, Gilbert Hannan, founded a grammar school for twelve poor boys in the assembly room in 1672, and the building was converted for municipal use as the local town hall in 1760. The assembly room was originally accessed using a stone staircase inside the building but, in the early 1840s, extensive restoration work was carried out at the expense of the local

John Abel Smith John Abel Smith (2 June 1802 – 7 January 1871) was a British Member of Parliament (MP) for Chichester and Midhurst. He was the son of John Smith who preceded him as one of the members of parliament for Midhurst. Smith married Anne Jervoise, ...

. A new external staircase with

wrought iron Wrought iron is an iron alloy with a very low carbon content (less than 0.08%) in contrast to that of cast iron (2.1% to 4%). It is a semi-fused mass of iron with fibrous slag inclusions (up to 2% by weight), which give it a wood-like "grain" ...

railings was installed on the north side of the building and a

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with two cells for petty criminals was established in the building. Following completion of the works,

magistrates' court A magistrates' court is a lower court where, in several jurisdictions, all criminal proceedings start. Also some civil matters may be dealt with here, such as family proceedings. Courts * Magistrates' court (England and Wales) * Magistrate's Co ...

hearings, which had been held in the Angel Inn in North Street, were relocated to the assembly room in the town hall in April 1848. The village

stocks Stocks are feet restraining devices that were used as a form of corporal punishment and public humiliation. The use of stocks is seen as early as Ancient Greece, where they are described as being in use in Solon's law code. The law describing ...

, placed outside the front of the town hall, continued to be used until January 1859, when a labourer who had defaulted on his debts, Henry Elldridge, became the last person to be sentenced to this form of punishment in the town. The ground floor was converted for use as storage for the horse-drawn fire engine and a fire bell was installed on the front of the building just below the

eaves The eaves are the edges of the roof which overhang the face of a wall and, normally, project beyond the side of a building. The eaves form an overhang to throw water clear of the walls and may be highly decorated as part of an architectural sty ...

in 1865. The borough council, which had not met for many years, was abolished under the

Municipal Corporations Act 1883 A municipality is usually a single administrative division having corporate status and powers of self-government or jurisdiction as granted by national and regional laws to which it is subordinate. The term ''municipality'' may also mean the ...

. After extensive investigations to confirm the existing ownership of the property, the building was conveyed to a new charitable body, the Midhurst Town Trust, in February 1910. The fire service continued to occupy the ground floor until 1955, when the service relocated to a new fire station at The Wharf. The ground floor was then converted for use as an antiques centre, the Eagle House Antiques Market, in the 1960s, and, following a major refurbishment in 2010, the ground floor re-opened again as Garton's Coffee Shop.

References

{{reflist Government buildings completed in 1551 City and town halls in West Sussex Grade II listed buildings in West Sussex Midhurst