The first town hall in Solihull was on The Square on a site which had previously been part of St Alphege's Churchyard and was completed in 1848.[1][a] In the early 1870s a small group of local businessmen formed a private company to erect and operate a more substantial public hall: the site they selected was on the east side of what was then a connecting road between Warwick Road and the High Street.[3][4]
The new building was designed by the Birmingham architect, J. A. Chatwin, in the Italianate style, built in red brick with stone dressings by a local builder, a Mr Deebank, and completed in 1876.[3] The design involved a symmetrical main frontage with seven bays facing onto Poplar Road; the central bay featured an arched doorway on the ground floor with a stone balcony above; there were seven gothic windows which were decorated with bar tracery with cusped circles (with bars radiating from the centre),[b] flanked by Corinthian order colonettes, forming an arcade on the first floor and there were seven narrow dormer windows at attic level. Internally, the principal rooms were a courthouse on the ground floor and an assembly room on the first floor.[3]
After an increase in the population, largely associated with the town's increasing importance as a residential area for the people working in Birmingham, the area became an urban district in 1932.[6] There was a significant increase in the amount of casework in the courts in the 1930s, which led to the magistrates moving to a dedicated courthouse facility at Warwick Road in 1935.[1] This in turn allowed the new urban district council to convert the old courtroom into a council chamber and to adopt the building in Poplar Road as its council house.[1] After announcing the town's advancement to the status of a municipal borough, Princess Margaret waved to the crowds from the balcony of the council house and then signed the visitors' book on 11 March 1954.[7]
The building continued to serve as the council house for the borough until a purpose-built modern civic centre was completed in Manor Square in 1967.[1][8] The old council house was subsequently used as a public venue for concerts and other performances until it was converted by Wetherspoons into a public house known as the "Assembly Rooms" in 2008.[9] After being sold to the Stonegate Pub Company in 2016, it was rebranded as Yates Solihull.[10][11]
