Old Town Hall, Great Dunmow

The town hall was commissioned as a guildhall following the incorporation of the borough in 1555.^[2][3][4] It was designed in the Elizabethan style, built using timber-framing with plaster infill, and was completed in around 1578.^[5][6][7] Internally, the principal room was the assembly room on the first floor.^[1]

The first floor was re-built in 1854-55, more than doubling the height of the assembly room (to which a gallery, 'capable of accommodating nearly 100 persons', was added on the north side).^[8][9] The design involved an asymmetrical main frontage of two bays facing onto the Market Place. The left hand bay, which was narrow and recessed, contained a doorway with a rectangular fanlight on the ground floor, and a small bi-partite window on the first floor. The right hand bay was fenestrated by a timber framed window on the ground floor, and by a prominent oriel window on the first floor, which was jettied out over the pavement and extensively decorated by pargeting. The right hand bay was surmounted by a gable containing a bargeboard and a clock face. At roof level, there was a cupola, containing a bell,^[10] which was surmounted by a pyramid-shaped roof and a weather vane. The cost of the clock, which was added during the rebuilding, was met from surplus money raised from awarding the Dunmow flitch, a custom which was revived in 1855.^[11]

The assembly room became the venue for public meetings in the town and also served as the regular meeting place of the local masonic lodge.^[12] However, the borough council, which had also met in the town hall, was abolished under the Municipal Corporations Act 1883.^[13] The building was then acquired by a syndicate of investors for commercial use in 1888.^[6] Meanwhile, Foakes Hall, which was financed by a legacy from Alice Foakes, was erected in Stortford Road and was officially opened in September 1934; it subsequently became the regular meeting place of Great Dunmow Parish Council.^[14] By the second half of the 20th century, the old town hall was serving as the offices of a firm of estate agents.^[15][16][17]