Liverpool Town Hall
Liverpool Town Hall stands in High Street at its junction with Dale Street, Castle Street, and Water Street. It is recorded in the National Heritage List for England as a designated Grade I listed building, and described in the list as “one of the finest surviving 18th-century town halls”.
The authors of the Buildings of England series refer to its “magnificent scale”, and consider it to be “probably the grandest …suite of civic rooms in the country”, and “an outstanding and complete example of late Georgian decoration”.
The town hall was built between 1749 and 1754 to a design by John Wood the Elder replacing an earlier town hall nearby. An extension to the north designed by James Wyatt was added in 1785. Following a fire in 1795 the hall was largely rebuilt and a dome designed by Wyatt was built.
Minor alterations have subsequently been made. The streets surrounding its site have altered since its initiation, notably when viewed from Castle Street, the south-side, it appears as off-centre. This is because Water Street which ran to the junction with Dale Street, the west-east axis, was continuous and built up across the junction so that the town hall was not visible originally from that aspect. The structures were removed 150 years after this to expose the building from this position.