Maidstone Town Hall

The first courthouse in the town was erected, for the purposes of hearings of the quarter sessions and assizes, in the Middle Row in 1587.[2] Civic leaders held their meetings in a room on the first floor the lower courthouse.[3] In 1608, a second courthouse, which known as the "upper courthouse", was erected a few yards to the east of the original courthouse, which was subsequently referred to as the "lower courthouse".[4] The upper courthouse was generally used for the assizes while the quarter sessions continued to held in the lower courthouse.[5]

In the late 18th century civic leaders decided to erect a new town hall on the site of the lower courthouse which was duly demolished in 1759. [6][lower-alpha 1] The new town hall was financed from a combination of public subscription and contributions from the justices.[8] It was designed in the neoclassical style, built with Portland stone on the ground floor and red brick above and was completed in 1763.[1][9] The design involved a symmetrical main frontage with five bays facing onto the High Street; it originally had arcading on the ground floor to allow markets to be held; a council chamber with pedimented windows was established on the first floor.[1] The central section of three bays, which slightly projected forward, was topped with a pediment from which a clock projected.[1] There was a cupola with Ionic order columns, which was capped with a gilded ball and a weather vane, at roof level.[1] Internally, the principal room was the council chamber, which featured a fine Rococo ceiling.[1] A prison cell was established above the council chamber: prisoners who were detained there while awaiting deportation applied graffiti to the walls.[10] The gaol was closed in around 1827, apparently after the escape of a prisoner being held there,[11] and the arcading on the ground floor was enclosed to create a police court sometime after 1835.[12]

By 1898, the town hall was already too small for the needs of the growing town, with the local directory stating that the building was "a miserable specimen of the poverty-stricken architecture of those days, possessing no room adequate to the needs of a large town, and necessitating the scattering of the offices of the Corporation."[12] However, the town hall remained the main meeting place of Maidstone Municipal Borough Council until council offices were established at Tonbridge Road in the 1960s,[13] and the council chamber in the town hall is still used by its successor body, Maidstone Borough Council, for committee meetings.[14]

• Grade II* listed buildings in Maidstone (borough)