Listed Building: No.86 Watling Street East (Town Hall) (1371643)

Former Town Hall and corn exchange. 1865 by T.H. Vernon. Limestone ashlar, banded with ironstone, hipped Welsh slate roof with ornamental ridge tiles and wrought iron finials. Italianate style. 2 storeys and attic. 3-window range. Complex plan. Central doorway with round-arched head, and keyblock on foliated capitals with ears of wheat, flanked by pilasters with similar capitals supporting console brackets bearing deep hood. Pair of 2-light windows to ground floor with similar heads and capitals . , outer capitals with ivy leafs; timber tracery. Smaller round-arched windows to first floor of 2 lights to centre, 3 lights to left and right with pilasters outermost, red sandstone columns innermost, stiff-leaf capitals and sash windows. Chamfered plinth, first floor cornice, modillioned eaves cornice, balustraded parapet and blank-arcaded stone stacks to angles. Centre and ends project slightly, with pediment to centre. Clock tower above with copper-clad belfry. 2-storey win . of white brick in Flemish bond with segmental-arched sash windows and side door with segmental-arched head with keyblock flanked by pilasters supporting pediment. Bay with door is pedimented. Interior: fine hall with composite pilasters, entablature with dentil cornice, coved arcaded vault to two sides with ornamental glazing to round windows. South end wall has tall round-arched panel with paterae to archivolt;2 small arches to north wall. Foundation stone laid by the Earl of . er 8th, 1865. The builder was J. Wheeler. (Buildings of England: Northamptonshire, p.434).

Record last edited

Jul 20 2022 4:35PM