Listing
Search the List

What is Listing?

Listing Guidance

Apply for Listing

Missing Pieces Project

Blue Plaque Scheme
Listing

Find out about listed buildings and other protected sites, and search the National Heritage List for England (NHLE).

Find out about listing

Terracotta tiles on the roof of Saintoft Lodge, Newton-on-Rawcliffe, Ryedale, North Yorkshire. Grade II listed © Historic England Archive DP371715
Advice
Climate Change

Heritage at Risk

Your Home

Technical Guidance

Planning

Caring for Heritage

Constructive Conservation
Advice

See our extensive range of expert advice to help you care for and protect historic places.

Get our advice

A contractor cutting bricks for the wall of the partially-restored wild and natural walled garden at Warley Place, Brentwood. Explore our technical advice section © Historic England Archive DP313199
Research
Our Research Strategy and Agenda

Research Governance

Latest Research

Research Methods

Current Research

Research Results

Support & Collaboration

Inclusive Heritage

Heritage Counts
Research

Discover and use our high-quality applied research to support the protection and management of the historic environment.

Discover our research

Archaeologist Dr David Neal discussing his illustration of the mosaic being excavated at Rutland Roman Villa with members of the University of Leicester Archaeological Services team View image DP264265 © Historic England
Images & Books
Find Photos

Search All Publications

Buy Books

The Historic England Archive
Images & Books

Historic England holds an extensive range of publications and historic collections in its public archive covering the historic environment.

Browse our collections

Children play with a doll and a pram on the cobbled Church Path in Queen Camel, Somerset, in April 1953. At the far end of the path is the tower of the Church of St Barnabas, which dates to the 14th century. Photographer: John Gay Image reference: AA091596 © Historic England Archive
Services & Skills
Education

Grants

Our Planning Services

Training & Skills

Archive Services

Heritage Action Zones

Levelling Up Places Service
Services & Skills

Find out about services offered by Historic England for funding, planning, education and research, as well as training and skill development.

Learn about our services

Heritage Apprentices in a training session on the Researching The Historic Environment module and training in Architectural Photography. Find out more about Heritage Apprenticeships © Historic England Archive DP347660
What's New
News

In Your Area

Historic England Blog

Latest Research

Heritage Online Debate

Statements

Stay up to Date
What's New

Read about our current news, projects and campaigns nationally and in your area.

Catch up with what's new

Two horsemen reading The Sportsman, 30 Oct 1902, Farnborough, Stratford-on-Avon, Warwickshire. Part of the Alfred Newton and Sons collection. Source Historic England Archive. BB98/02592
About Us
What We Do

Who We Are

How We Are Funded

Contact Us

Careers

Volunteer with Historic England
About Us

Historic England is the public body that helps people care for, enjoy and celebrate England's spectacular historic environment.

Find out more

Mountbatten House (formerly Gateway House), Basing View, Basingstoke, the former headquarters for the paper merchants Wiggins Teape by Arup Associates. Listed at Grade II. © Historic England
Sign in
Manage my account

Sign out

The Town Hall

The Town Hall, Market Place, Wokingham, RG40 1AS

Listed on the National Heritage List for England. Search over 400,000 listed places

Overview

Heritage Category:: Listed Building
Grade:: II*
List Entry Number:: 1303481
Date first listed:: 01-Oct-1969
List Entry Name:: The Town Hall
Statutory Address:: The Town Hall, Market Place, Wokingham, RG40 1AS

User submitted image — Uploaded by Dominic Martin This photo may not represent the current condition of the site
View all

Location

Location of this list entry and nearby places that are also listed. Use our map search to find more listed places.

This map is for quick reference purposes only and may not be to scale.

What is the National Heritage List for England?

The National Heritage List for England is a unique register of our country's most significant historic buildings and sites. The places on the list are protected by law and most are not open to the public.

The list includes:

🏠 Buildings
🏰 Scheduled monuments
🌳 Parks and gardens
⚔️ Battlefields
⚓ Shipwrecks

Find out more about listing

Images of England Project

To view this image please use Firefox, Chrome, Safari, or Edge.

Archive image, may not represent current condition of site.

Date:: 2000-08-06
Reference:: IOE01/00165/01
Rights:: © Brian Steptoe. Source: Historic England Archive

Historic England Archive

Search over 1 million photographs and drawings from the 1850s to the present day using our images archive.

Find Photos

Official list entry

Heritage Category:: Listed Building
Grade:: II*
List Entry Number:: 1303481
Date first listed:: 01-Oct-1969
Date of most recent amendment:: 09-Apr-2003
List Entry Name:: The Town Hall
Statutory Address 1:: The Town Hall, Market Place, Wokingham, RG40 1AS

This List entry helps identify the building designated at this address for its special architectural or historic interest.

Unless the List entry states otherwise, it includes both the structure itself and any object or structure fixed to it (whether inside or outside) as well as any object or structure within the curtilage of the building.

For these purposes, to be included within the curtilage of the building, the object or structure must have formed part of the land since before 1st July 1948.

Understanding list entries

Corrections and minor amendments

This List entry helps identify the building designated at this address for its special architectural or historic interest.

For these purposes, to be included within the curtilage of the building, the object or structure must have formed part of the land since before 1st July 1948.

Understanding list entries

Corrections and minor amendments

Location

Statutory Address:: The Town Hall, Market Place, Wokingham, RG40 1AS

The building or site itself may lie within the boundary of more than one authority.

District:: Wokingham (Unitary Authority)
Parish:: Wokingham
National Grid Reference:: SU 81211 68561

Details

SU 8168 NW 18/26

WOKINGHAM MARKET PLACE The Town Hall

2.10.69

G.V. II*

Town hall and police station, later also fire station; now town hall and offices, with four shops and enclosed market. 1860 with minor late-C20 alterations. (William Ford) Poulton (1822-1900) and (William Henry) Woodman (1822-1879). Wheeler and Woodroffe, craftsmen. High Victorian Free Gothic style. Red brick, with blue brick and Bath stone dressings used to polychromatic effect. Steeply pitched slate roofs. Brick corbelled chimneys.

PLAN: Triangular plan on island site with two-storey-plus-attic main range to north, lower wings extending to the south on each side and continuing to wide one-storey apse that encloses the rear yard. Main range with hall, council chamber and ancillary rooms to first floor, and four shops at ground floor.

EXTERIORS: Irregular facades with projecting moulded plinth, buttresses, dentilled and moulded string course at first floor cill level, dentilled and moulded eaves course and parapet cornice and coped gables. Most windows trefoil headed lancets with stone surrounds, mullions and transoms under polychrome pointed arches. NORTH elevation with central section of four bays defined by full height buttresses with moulded bases and splayed tops. Each bay with large pointed arched openings to ground floor, now with late-C20 plain glass shop windows, pointed relieving arches in tympanum, first floor large cross windows under seven-light window in trefoil stone surround, all under steep gable with stone copings. Steep pitched roof with two tall corbelled chimneys and central tall fleche with 'Tucker of London' clock movement, weathercock, and iron balustraded platform. Lower apsidal ends to east and west with hipped roof and steep gable above three-light windows to ground and first floors. EAST and WEST elevations both have entrance bay at north end with double doors under pointed arch, tall three-light window at first floor with iron balcony, and steep 'Chateau' style roof. WEST elevation with secondary entrance and window to ground floor Mayor's chamber, pair of windows above and stone 'County Police Station' plaque to centre under gablet with stone coping. Elaborate oriel to south end has three lancets with stone ogee arches. SOUTH elevation with wide one-storey 'apse' with central wide opening under steep pointed gable, deep 'X' pattern brick frieze, and view to the numerous chimneys, gables and fleche of the higher ranges.

INTERIOR: Main range has first floor hall of four bays with elaborate chamfered hammer-beam truss roof with carved stone corbel blocks and shields painted with coats-of-arms of past and present High Stewards of Wokingham. Wide carved stone fireplace to centre of west wall. Smaller stone fireplace in outside wall to northeast corner. At east end, a tall pointed arch with wooden panelled sliding doors to War Memorial room, with wooden carved and moulded memorial on east wall and stone fireplace in corner. At west end, a small council chamber with a band of wooden panelling carved with names of past mayors. Corridor running east-west along the hall to balconies at opposite ends. Town council office with oriel window and fireplace. Mayor's parlour at ground floor in former police superintendent's chamber. Two prison cells with barred iron doors and locks.

HISTORY: The Town Hall stands on the site of the Medieval Guildhall, which was demolished in 1858. The new Town Hall was opened on June 6, 1860 by Lord Braybrooke. It was funded in part by money available for a new County Police Station, and the building jointly housed the police until 1905 when the new police station was built. Two of the original three prison cells survive. In 1877, the Fire Brigade housed a horse-drawn fire engine in the covered market, and this use continued until 1969 when the fire station was built. The building also housed a covered market under the arches, which are now used as individual shops.

Group value with the listed buildings around the perimeter of the site and the dated 1881 Drinking Fountain (q.v.) and K6 Telephone Kiosk (q.v.) immediately adjacent to the Town Hall.

Listing NGR: SU8121168561

This List entry has been amended to add sources for War Memorials Online and the War Memorials Register. These sources were not used in the compilation of this List entry but are added here as a guide for further reading, 25 October 2017.

Legacy

The contents of this record have been generated from a legacy data system.

Legacy System number:: 41682
Legacy System:: LBS

Sources

Books and journals
Cunningham, C , Victorian and Edwardian Town Halls, (1981)
Ditchfield, P H, Page, W, The Victoria History of the County of Berkshire, (1923), 226
Pevsner, N, The Buildings of England: Berkshire, (1966), 308
Websites
British Geological Survey, Strategic Stone Study, accessed 04/02/2020 from https://www.bgs.ac.uk/mineralsuk/buildingStones/StrategicStoneStudy/EH_atlases.html
War Memorials Online, accessed 25 October 2017 from https://www.warmemorialsonline.org.uk/memorial/252921
War Memorials Register, accessed 25 October 2017 from http://www.iwm.org.uk/memorials/item/memorial/117
Other
The Illustrated London News, 23 June 1860, 616

Legal

This building is listed under the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990 as amended for its special architectural or historic interest.