Listed Building record MDO16555 - The Old Town Hall, West Street, Corfe Castle

Former Town Hall, ground floor now used as Museum. Building is of seventeenth century origin, largely rebuilt in about 1774. Walls of rubble stone up to first floor level and brick above, stone slate roof.

<1> Royal Commission on Historical Monuments (England), 1970, An Inventory of Historical Monuments in the County of Dorset, Volume II (South East) Part 1, 56 (Monograph). SDO148.

'(4) TOWN HALL (5 yds. N.W.), on the E. side of West Street (Plate 89), is a small building of two storeys recessed into the steeply banked rise from the street to the churchyard; the walls of the ground floor, where visible, are of squared and coursed Purbeck stone rubble, of the upper floor of brick in Flemish bond with ashlar dressings; the roofs are covered with stone slates. It was rebuilt shortly before 1774, with the re-use of some 17th-century stone dressings, and contained the Council Chamber on the first floor and a lock-up below. Corfe Castle Corporation was abolished after the passing of the Municipal Corporations Act, 1883, and its property administered by a body of trustees.
The W. front has a stone plat-band crossing the heads of the two doorways and a brick dentilled eaves cornice. The doorways have 17th-century chamfered jambs, one with shaped stops; one of the ground-floor windows is stone-mullioned, the other is a rectangular loop light with chamfered dressings. The two W. windows on the upper floor have round heads, flat stone architraves and plain key-blocks and imposts. The gabled N. and S. ends are obscured below first-floor level; the visible brickwork is much patched. The N. end contains a window similar to those on the W. and, in the gable, a sunk roundel with brick voussoirs. On the E. where the levels of the ground outside and the first floor are the same, access from the churchyard was directly into the Council Chamber through a central doorway, now blocked, with flat gauged-brick head and keystone. Inside, the ground floor has two exposed ceiling beams of rectangular section; the stair at the N. end is modern. The Council Chamber has a plaster ceiling with enriched cornice and contains a table with turned legs, plain rails, stretchers and braces, probably contemporary with the building but for the modern top.'

Record last edited

Jun 26 2014 1:59PM