| Old Town Hall | |
| Coordinates: | 52.1535°N 1.0518°W |
| Location: | High Street, Needham Market |
| Built: | 1866 |
| Architect: | Frederick Barnes |
| Architecture: | Italianate style |
| Designation1: | Grade II Listed Building |
| Designation1 Offname: | The Old Town Hall |
| Designation1 Date: | 24 August 1977 |
| Designation1 Number: | 1253656 |
The Old Town Hall is a municipal building in the High Street in Needham Market, Suffolk, England. The building, which now accommodates an antiques centre and other shops, is a Grade II listed building.
The building was commissioned by a group of businessmen, led by Admiral Sir George Broke-Middleton of Shrubland Hall, who set up a private company to finance and commission a municipal building for the benefit of the town.[1] The site they selected, which was in the High Street, was occupied by a cottage which had been the birthplace of the artist, Samuel Read.[2] [3] The building was designed by Frederick Barnes in the Italianate style, built by a local contractor, H. Godfrey, in red and buff bricks at a cost of £1,300 and was completed in late 1866.
The design involved a symmetrical main frontage with three bays facing onto the High Street. The central bay, which slightly projected forward at ground floor level, featured a round headed entrance with imposts supporting an architrave: there were three deeply-recessed narrow round headed windows on the first floor. The outer bays were fenestrated by tripartite sash windows on the ground floor and by single deeply-recessed round headed windows on the first floor. At roof level, there was a parapet and a modillioned cornice, while the corners were decorated by full-height piers surmounted by small pediments. Internally, the principal rooms were the lecture room, which was at the front of the building on the first floor, a courtroom, a public library and a reading room. There were also offices for the local police officers and a lock-up for petty criminals.[4]
A commemorative stone, recording Broke-Middleton's patronage, as well as the names of the architect and the builder, was installed above the entrance by Broke-Middleton himself in June 1866.[5] The architectural historian, Nikolaus Pevsner, was unimpressed with the design and referred to it as "a sad building of yellow and red brick with lean round arches".[6]
In the 19th century, the courtroom was used for fortnightly petty session hearings for the Bosmere and Claydon Hundred, one of the ancient hundreds of Suffolk.[7] During the Second World War, the town hall narrowly missed being demolished on 19 October 1942 when a German bomb fell on a site just to the south of the building, killing four civilians and injuring many more.[8] [9] The company which had financed and commissioned the building was wound-up in 1948 and the building was subsequently converted for commercial use: it has since been used by a variety of local businesses including a publishing house[10] and an antiques centre.[11] [12]