The Old Town Hall was a municipal building in the High Street in

Rickmansworth Rickmansworth () is a town in south-west Hertfordshire, England, located approximately north-west of central London, south-west of Watford and inside the perimeter of the M25 motorway. The town is mainly to the north of the Grand Union Canal ( ...

, a town in

Hertfordshire Hertfordshire ( or ; often abbreviated Herts) is a ceremonial county in the East of England and one of the home counties. It borders Bedfordshire to the north-west, Cambridgeshire to the north-east, Essex to the east, Greater London to the ...

, in England. The upper floors have been demolished and the ground floor is now in retail use.

History

In the mid-1860s, a group of local businessmen decided to form a company, known as the Rickmansworth Town Hall Company, to finance and commission a town hall for the town. The site they selected, on the south side of the High Street, was occupied by the old Market Hall, which had become very dilapidated. The site was donated to the directors by the

lord of the manor Lord of the manor is a title that, in Anglo-Saxon England and Norman England, referred to the landholder of a historical rural estate. The titles date to the English Feudalism, feudal (specifically English feudal barony, baronial) system. The ...

, John Saunders Gilliat, whose residence was at The Cedars in Rickmansworth. The new building was designed by Arthur Thomas Allom (1829–1895) of

Westminster Westminster is the main settlement of the City of Westminster in Central London, Central London, England. It extends from the River Thames to Oxford Street and has many famous landmarks, including the Palace of Westminster, Buckingham Palace, ...

in the

Gothic Revival style Gothic Revival (also referred to as Victorian Gothic or neo-Gothic) is an architectural movement that after a gradual build-up beginning in the second half of the 17th century became a widespread movement in the first half of the 19th century ...

, built in red brick with

Bath stone Bath Stone is an oolitic limestone comprising granular fragments of calcium carbonate originally obtained from the Middle Jurassic aged Great Oolite Group of the Combe Down and Bathampton Down Mines under Combe Down, Somerset, England. Its h ...

dressings at a cost of £1,200 and was officially opened in December 1869. The design involved a symmetrical main frontage of two bays facing onto the High Street. The left-hand bay featured an arched doorway with an

archivolt An archivolt (or voussure) is an ornamental Molding (decorative), moulding or band following the curve on the underside of an arch. It is composed of bands of ornamental mouldings (or other architectural elements) surrounding an arched opening, ...

, surmounted by a lamp which projected over the pavement. The right-hand bay on the ground floor and both bays on the first floor were fenestrated by

casement window A casement window is a window that is attached to its frame by one or more hinges at the side. They are used singly or in pairs within a common frame, in which case they are hinged on the outside. Casement windows are often held open using a c ...

s with stone surrounds. There was an additional storey in the left-hand bay at attic level, fenestrated by a small square window and surmounted by a

stepped gable A stepped gable, crow-stepped gable, or corbie step is a stairstep type of design at the top of the triangular gable-end of a building. The top of the parapet wall projects above the roofline and the top of the brick or stone wall is stacked in ...

with a

finial A finial () or hip-knob is an element marking the top or end of some object, often formed to be a decorative feature. In architecture, it is a small decorative device, employed to emphasize the Apex (geometry), apex of a dome, spire, tower, roo ...

. Internally, the principal room was an assembly hall, which was long and wide and which featured a

hammerbeam roof A hammerbeam roof is a decorative, open timber roof truss typical of English Gothic architecture and has been called "the most spectacular endeavour of the English Medieval carpenter". They are traditionally timber framed, using short beams proj ...

. It was used for dances, concerts, lectures, and monthly meetings of the Penny Reading Society. An inquiry was held in February 1896 at the hall, to consider whether to establish an urban district. This proposal went ahead, and the first meeting of Rickmansworth Urban District Council was held at the Town Hall on 16 April 1898. In 1912, the assembly hall was converted into an auditorium to facilitate its use as a cinema known as the Electric Picture Playhouse, with a capacity of 300 people. It was later renamed the Electric Palace, but it closed as a cinema in 1927. Meanwhile, the urban district council relocated to the former home of

William Penn William Penn ( – ) was an English writer, religious thinker, and influential Quakers, Quaker who founded the Province of Pennsylvania during the British colonization of the Americas, British colonial era. An advocate of democracy and religi ...

at Basing House, on the north side of the High Street in 1930. The auditorium behind the old town hall was later demolished, along with the upper part of the town hall facade. The lower part of the facade was altered to create two shop fronts, while a two-storey office block was built on the site of the auditorium behind.

References

{{reflist Government buildings completed in 1869 Rickmansworth City and town halls in Hertfordshire