Worthing Town Hall including Assembly Hall and Worthing Room

The town commissioners in Worthing originally met at the Nelson Inn on South Street and later at the Royal Oak Public House in Market Street. In the 1820s the commissioners decided to procure a dedicated town hall: the site they selected at the north end of South Street was a garden owned by Sir Timothy Shelley, former Whig MP for Horsham and New Shoreham and the father of the Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. The first purpose-built town hall, which was designed in the neoclassical style with a tetrastyle portico and a clock tower was completed in June 1835. The town hall also acted as a courthouse for hearing quarter sessions and assizes. The war memorial at the site, which takes the…

The carpet in the council chamber is by Maufe of Heal's. The entrance hall floor is by Gilbert Bayes. In the mayor's parlour is a map of Worthing by MacDonald Gill. It depicts Worthing in 1933, when there was no development in Findon Valley or West Durrington, and very little at Goring-by-Sea. Instead there were many glasshouses across the borough that grew a variety of produce including figs, tomatoes, grapes, cucumbers, mushrooms and chrysanthemums.