OLD GUILDHALL AND PRISON.

THIS building stood for many years in Weekday Cross, but was demolished in 1894. The original building was known to have existed in the fourteenth century. in 1744 the old and picturesque front was removed, and the building raised several feet higher than heretofore, the whole being also widened. Ten Tuscan columns of timber supported the fronts of the upper-storeys, which projected six feet over the footpath. Under this piazza was the approach to the prisons and house of the jailer. The structure had two rows of nine windows on the frontage, and a diamond-shaped clock dial at the west end.

The front was altered in 1791 for police-court purposes, and the three pairs of westerly windows made into single ones. Later, the fourth and fifth windows were made into one, the same being long and semi-circular at the top. A new clock, with circular dial, displaced the original one in 1808. Its frontage was subsequently plastered and painted over, and it continued to be used as a Council Chamber until 1877. The Guildhall was regularly made use of as a Court House until the opening of the new Guildhall, in Burton Street, in the year 1888.