Reigate Town Hall is a municipal building in Castlefield Road,

Reigate Reigate ( ) is a town in Surrey, England, around south of central London. The settlement is recorded in Domesday Book in 1086 as ''Cherchefelle'' and first appears with its modern name in the 1190s. The earliest archaeological evidence for huma ...

, Surrey, England. The town hall, which is the meeting place of Reigate and Banstead Borough Council, is a Grade II

listed building In the United Kingdom, a listed building or listed structure is one that has been placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Historic Environment Scotland in Scotland, in Wales, and the Northern I ...

History

New Council Chamber, Reigate Town Hall - geograph

The building was commissioned to replace the old town hall with had been built on the north side of the High Street in 1798. After civic leaders found that the old building was inadequate for their needs, they decided to procure a new town hall: the site they selected had previously been open land to the east of

Reigate Castle Reigate Castle is a former castle in the town of Reigate in the county of Surrey, England. None of the castle buildings survive today, but a cave below the site, considered to be part of the castle, still exists. Known as "Baron's Cave", it is occ ...

. The new town hall was designed by Macintosh and Newman in the Arts and Crafts style, built at a cost of £25,000 and completed in 1901. The design involved a symmetrical main frontage with twelve bays facing onto Castlefield Road with the end three bays at each end projected forward as

pavilion In architecture, ''pavilion'' has several meanings: * It may be a subsidiary building that is either positioned separately or as an attachment to a main building. Often it is associated with pleasure. In palaces and traditional mansions of Asia ...

s with

hipped roof A hip roof, hip-roof or hipped roof, is a type of roof where all sides slope downwards to the walls, usually with a fairly gentle slope (although a tented roof by definition is a hipped roof with steeply pitched slopes rising to a peak). Thus ...

s and turrets; the central section of six bays featured a doorway in the penultimate bay from the left which gave access to the municipal buildings wing located on the left, as well as a doorway in the penultimate bay from the right which gave access to the courthouse and police wing located on the right. Above the two doorways were modified stained glass

Venetian window A Venetian window (also known as a Serlian window) is a large tripartite window which is a key element in Palladian architecture. Although Sebastiano Serlio (1475–1554) did not invent it, the window features largely in the work of the Italian ...

s (decorated with rose motifs on the municipal buildings side and the Royal

coat of arms A coat of arms is a heraldic visual design on an escutcheon (i.e., shield), surcoat, or tabard (the latter two being outer garments). The coat of arms on an escutcheon forms the central element of the full heraldic achievement, which in it ...

on the courthouse side) with gables above. Internally, the principal rooms were the council chamber, which was decorated in an

Art Nouveau Art Nouveau (; ) is an international style of art, architecture, and applied art, especially the decorative arts. The style is known by different names in different languages: in German, in Italian, in Catalan, and also known as the Moder ...

style with a fine ceiling, in the municipal buildings wing, and the magistrates' court, which was oak panelled, in the courthouse wing. The fire station, which featured a four-storey tower with a

pagoda A pagoda is an Asian tiered tower with multiple eaves common to Nepal, India, China, Japan, Korea, Myanmar, Vietnam, and other parts of Asia. Most pagodas were built to have a religious function, most often Buddhist but sometimes Taoi ...

style roof, formed a separate structure to the left. After the

First World War World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fig ...

, a memorial board was hung on a wall in the town hall to commemorate the lives of local service personnel who had died in the war. The building served as the headquarters of Reigate Municipal Borough Council and remained the local seat of government when the enlarged Reigate and Banstead Borough Council was formed in 1974. The borough council secured access to the whole complex once the police had moved to Cherchefelle in 1943, the fire service had moved to Croydon Road in 1955 and the courts service had moved to Hatchlands Road in the early 1970s. Works of art in the town hall include a landscape by

Henry Tanworth Wells Henry Tanworth Wells (14 December 1828 – 16 January 1903) was an English miniature and portrait painter. He was a member of the Pre-Raphaelite circle though he painted in the academic style. His most popular painting was ''Victoria Re ...

depicting a cart being loaded at a quarry at

Holmbury Hill Holmbury Hill is a wooded area of above sea level in Surrey, England, and the site of an Iron Age-period hillfort. The Old Saxon word "holm" can be translated as hill and "bury" means fortified place. It sits along the undulating Greensand Rid ...

and painting by

George Hooper George Hooper may refer to: * George Hooper (bishop) (1640–1727), English bishop * George K. Hooper (1868–1939), American engineer and architect * George Hooper (artist) (1910–1994), British artist * Arthur George Hooper Arthur George Ho ...

depicting a garden at Loxwood.

References

{{reflist Government buildings completed in 1901 City and town halls in Surrey Reigate Grade II listed buildings in Surrey