Description

This list entry was subjected to a Minor Enhancement to update the name, address and text on the 20 July 2022
SW 64 SE
11/290

REDRUTH
PENRYN STREET (west side)
Old Courthouse

(Formerly listed as Old Town Hall)

28.9.78

GV
II

Town Hall, now club. 1850, by Robert Blee; altered. Granite ashlar, slate roof. Double-depth plan. Two storeys and three bays, symmetrical, in Doric style, with raised quoins, first floor string-course, and triglyph frieze; in the centre, a wide recessed porch with Tuscan columns distyle in antis, triglyph frieze with roundels on the metopes, and a cornice, channelled rustication to the interior of the porch finished as quoins to the surround, and panelled double doors (the top panels glazed); above the porch, a tripartite sashed window in an architrave with pilaster jambs, plain frieze and prominent cornice; two 12-pane sashed windows on each floor, those at ground floor with quoined surrounds, stepped voussoirs, and panelled aprons, and those above with broad shouldered architraves; crowning frieze of triglyphs with wreaths; mutules to projecting eaves. Gable chimneys. Interior: imperial staircase with stick balusters; full-width room at first floor formerly used as courtroom, but altered; otherwise, altered.

HISTORY: built under the Small Debts Act of 1846 which allowed the Redruth court to follow up smaller debts it was owed rather than visiting the assize courts in Bodmin. Robert Blee was an inventor of mine safety technology; his initials and the date of construction appear on the left-hand side of the main elevation, and in the late-C19 the terrace within which the building sits was called Blee’s Terrace. The building later became the offices of Thurstan Peter (1854-1917), the solicitor and historian who excavated the Neolithic and Iron Age settlements on Carn Brea in the late 1890s, as recorded on a plaque on the front elevation.

Listing NGR: SW6982641869

External Links

• Historic England Listing
• Old Courthouse at Wikipedia
• Wikidata Q26435365

External links are from the relevant listing authority and, where applicable, Wikidata. Wikidata IDs may be related buildings as well as this specific building. If you want to add or update a link, you will need to do so by editing the Wikidata entry.

Recommended Books

• 
  Sussex: East with Brighton and Hove (Buildings of England) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Bristol (Pevsner Architectural Guides: City Guides)
• 
  Development and Design of Heritage Sensitive Sites: Strategies for Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas
• 
  Huddersfield in 50 Buildings
• 
  [(Cumberland and Westmorland)] [By (author) Nikolaus Pevsner] published on (January, 1967)
• 
  Norfolk 1: Norwich and North-East: Norwich and North-east v. 1 (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)