In the early 1860s, a group of local businessmen decided to form a private company, known as the "Romsey Corn Exchange Company", to finance and commission a purpose-built corn exchange for the town.[2] The site they selected was a prominent position at the top of The Hundred in a position lying close to the main Market Place.[3]
The building was designed in the neoclassical style, built in brick with a stucco finish and was completed in 1864.[4] The design involved a symmetrical main frontage of three bays facing onto the Corn Market. The central bay originally featured a tall segmental headed doorway with an architrave and a keystone, while the outer bays were fenestrated by tall round headed windows with architraves and keystones. The bays were separated by full-height Corinthian order pilasters supporting an entablature, a cornice and a modillioned pediment containing carvings of gilded sheaves, a pitchfork and a sickle in the tympanum.[5]
The building also became the main public events venue for the town: early visitors included the Prime Minister, Lord Palmerston, who gave a speech about education to the Romsey Labourers' Encouragement Association in January 1865.[6] His step-son, William Cowper-Temple, 1st Baron Mount Temple, whose seat was at Broadlands, paid for a drinking fountain, which was placed outside the building in 1886.[7]
The use of the building as a corn exchange declined significantly in the wake of the Great Depression of British Agriculture in the late 19th century.[8] Instead, it operated as the "Corn Exchange Cinema" from the early 20th century[9] until the First World War, when it became a drill hall for a detachment from C Squadron of the Hampshire Yeomanry and for C Company of the 4th Battalion the Hampshire Regiment.[10]
The building was remodelled during the 1920s to introduce an upper floor: the changes involved a squatter doorway and a new French door with a balcony above the doorway in the central bay, and new tripartite windows on both floors in the outer bays. Tenants introduced at that time included a branch of Barclays and a grocery business, Hook Brothers.[11] The balcony above the doorway was removed from the front of the building in the 1950s.[12] Hook Brothers moved out when Barclays took over the whole building in the 1960s.[13] The building became vacant when Barclays closed the branch in December 2022.[14]
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