Town Hall, Wellington Road, Rhyl

Disgrifiad

Rhyl town hall was built in 1874-6, to designs of Wood and Turner of Barrow, for the Rhyl Improvement Commissioners. It was extended in similar style by the addition of a Carnegie Library in 1906. The building was not the first town hall on the site, since a previous town hall (itself replacing an earlier hall on High Street) had been built in 1855. The building was designed originally to house the County court, a petty sessions room, offices for the commissioners, a police station, and fruit, fish and corn-markets, and the main hall was used for entertainment and public functions. It was extended and remodelled internally, 1986-90. It was built in French gothic style in snecked grey rubble with gold freestone dressings, and steep slate hipped roofs with ridge cresting. There are swept slate aprons to paired louvred turrets. The main hall block is symmetrical about the central entrance tower: This has corbelled gabled porch with squat pilasters carrying tooled but unfinished blocks of stones forming kneelers. Similar unfinished blocks of stones form kneelers. There is a blind traceried window above, set with an unfinished block (probably intended to house inscription), a clock beneath the gable in octagonal upper section, which terminates in a short tiled spire with lucarnes and weather vane. Flat-roofed bays link the tower at ground floor with projecting outer pavilions. To the right of the main range facing Wellington road, the Carnegie Library was added in 1906. It projects from the main hall range to balance the pavilion block to the left, and comprises a 3-window range. There is a gabled porch to its left, with clustered pinnacles to either wide of gable, and a shallow arch lettered 'Carnegie Free Library'. There are 4 ground floor shouldered windows with renewed glazing, and arched upper windows with incised decoration.