Kingston Guildhall

Built in the Georgian style, the Guildhall brought together Kingston's administrative functions. Purpose-built Magistrates Courts were included in the building, part of which are now home to Kingston History Centre.

History

Kingston upon Thames, historically in Surrey, was an important market town, port and river crossing from the early medieval period, while there is evidence of Saxon settlement and of activity dating from the prehistoric period and of Roman occupation. It is close to the important historic royal estates at Hampton Court, Bushy Park, Richmond and Richmond Park. The old core of the town, around All Saints Church (C14 and C15, on an earlier site) and Market Place, with its recognisably medieval street pattern, is ‘the best preserved of its type in outer London’ (Pevsner and Cherry, London: South, 1983 p. 307). Kingston thrived first as an agricultural and market town and on its historic industries of malting, brewing and tanning, salmon fishing and timber exporting, before expanding rapidly as a suburb after the arrival of the railway in the 1860s. In the later C19 it become a centre of local government, and in the early C20 became an important shopping and commercial centre. Its rich diversity of buildings and structures from all periods reflect the multi-facetted development of the town.

Details

1934-5. Maurice Webb. Neo Georgian red brick building with Portland stone dressings and tiled roof. Semi-circular plan. Three storeys with square headed twelve paned windows. Horizontally rusticated stone base. Stone band above first floor. To centre of semi-circular elevation a massive square tower with a low octagonal spire and fluted corner pinnacles. Central entrance in base, of tower. Two storey, round headed window above set in open pedimented stone niche with simplified Corinthian columns rising from corbelled balcony. Pictorial references to the Thames displayed upon keystone inside niche, corbels, capitals and on the iron gates. Crest of Kingston set further up the tower. Marble lined circular entrance hall. Central staircase with original opaque glass semi-spherical lamps. Original wall and hanging lights in south west, council chamber, also of opaque glass with bronze trimming.

Text taken from Historic England