The first town hall, built in the eighteenth century, had been at the top of Great Darkgate Street; its mid-nineteenth century replacement was built on a new site in Queen's Road, opposite the end of Portland Street. This town hall was by William Coulthart, and built in 1848-51, with a florid Ionic portico and single-storey wings and, from photographic evidence, afterwards encrusted with stucco ornament that looked of the later nineteenth century. It was burnt out in 1957 and its remains dictated the form of the present town hall, which was built in 1961 to the design of S. Colwyn Foulkes of Colwyn Bay, in a neo-Georgian style with thin Adamesque portico and an internal full-height entrance hall.
Victorian Society tour notes, 1999, revised January 2006, D.J.Percival, RCAHMW.