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

Wilton, Wiltshire Wilton is a town and Civil parishes in England, civil parish in Wiltshire, England. Lying about west of the city of Salisbury, and until 1889 the county town of Wiltshire, it has a rich heritage dating back to the Anglo-Saxons. The parish had ...

, England. The structure, which is currently used as a Baptist church, is a Grade II

listed building In the United Kingdom, a listed building is a structure of particular architectural or historic interest deserving of special protection. Such buildings are placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Hi ...

History

The first municipal building in the town was an ancient

guildhall A guildhall, also known as a guild hall or guild house, is a historical building originally used for tax collecting by municipalities or merchants in Europe, with many surviving today in Great Britain and the Low Countries. These buildings commo ...

, which stood on the east side of Market Place; it was a two-storey building with shops on the ground floor and an assembly room on the first floor. The assembly room was accessed using an external staircase on the north side. In the 1730s, after the guildhall became dilapidated, borough officials decided to demolish the old building and to build a new structure on the same site. The new building was designed in the

neoclassical style Neoclassicism, also spelled Neo-classicism, emerged as a Western cultural movement in the decorative and visual arts, literature, theatre, music, and architecture that drew inspiration from the art and culture of classical antiquity. Neoclassici ...

, built in red brick with stone dressings and was completed in 1738. The design involved a symmetrical main frontage with six bays facing onto Market Place; there was a doorway with a wooden surround and a

cornice In architecture, a cornice (from the Italian ''cornice'' meaning "ledge") is generally any horizontal decorative Moulding (decorative), moulding that crowns a building or furniture element—for example, the cornice over a door or window, ar ...

in the third bay from the right; the other bays on the ground floor contained segmental openings while the first floor was fenestrated 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 windows, but can now contain an individual sheet (or sheets, in the case of double glazing) of glass. History ...

s with

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, ...

s. At the roof level there was a moulded stone cornice. The borough council, which had met in the town hall, was reformed 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 gov ...

. A clock tower with a

pyramid A pyramid () is a structure whose visible surfaces are triangular in broad outline and converge toward the top, making the appearance roughly a pyramid in the geometric sense. The base of a pyramid can be of any polygon shape, such as trian ...

-shaped

dome A dome () is an architectural element similar to the hollow upper half of a sphere. There is significant overlap with the term cupola, which may also refer to a dome or a structure on top of a dome. The precise definition of a dome has been a m ...

was added in 1889. The architectural historian,

Nikolaus Pevsner Sir Nikolaus Bernhard Leon Pevsner (30 January 1902 – 18 August 1983) was a German-British art historian and architectural historian best known for his monumental 46-volume series of county-by-county guides, ''The Buildings of England'' (195 ...

, described the building as "quite insignificant" in relation to the other town halls in Wiltshire. In the late 19th century, the town hall was the venue for local classes in science and art and, during the

First World War World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...

, it was requisitioned for military use with

courts martial A court-martial (plural ''courts-martial'' or ''courts martial'', as "martial" is a postpositive adjective) is a military court or a trial conducted in such a court. A court-martial is empowered to determine the guilt of members of the arme ...

being held there. It also served as a community events venue with organisations such as the

Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Society The Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Society was founded in 1853, and is one of the largest county-based archaeological societies in the United Kingdom. It runs the Wiltshire Museum in Devizes, Wiltshire which has the best Bronze Age ...

holding its annual meetings there. Meanwhile, offices for council officers and their departments were established in Kingsbury Square. The town hall continued to serve as a meeting place for the borough council for much of the 20th century, but ceased to be the local seat of government when the enlarged Salisbury District Council was formed in 1974. It was subsequently acquired by the local

Baptist Baptists are a Christian denomination, denomination within Protestant Christianity distinguished by baptizing only professing Christian believers (believer's baptism) and doing so by complete Immersion baptism, immersion. Baptist churches ge ...

minister, the Reverend Oliver Vellacott, refurbished and then re-opened as a Baptist church in 1981.

References

{{Reflist Georgian architecture in Wiltshire Government buildings completed in 1738 City and town halls in Wiltshire Grade II listed buildings in Wiltshire Grade II listed government buildings Wilton, Wiltshire