The county council decided to find a location where it could consolidate its offices and meeting place. In 1916 it bought a large seventeenth century house with extensive grounds called Wren House (since renamed Edes House) in West Street in Chichester.[5][6] Wren House was purchased with the intention of later building a new headquarters for the county council in the grounds, once the First World War was over and finances allowed.[7][8]
The new county hall in the grounds of Wren House was designed by Cecil G Stillman, the County Architect, in the Georgian Revival style, and was built between 1933 and 1936.[9][10] The design involved a symmetrical main frontage with twenty-one bays facing onto a central courtyard; the central section of eleven bays, which projected slightly forward, featured a doorway on the ground floor flanked by Ionic order columns supporting an entablature with a pediment above; there was a tall round-headed window between the first and second floors with an open round-headed pediment above; the end sections of the main frontage contained arched carriageways to permit vehicle access to the rear of the site and there were side wings beyond that.[11] Internally, the principal room was the council chamber.[12][13][14]
The main building was altered in the 1960s to accommodate an emergency control centre in case of a nuclear attack.[15] The county council also acquired a Victorian mansion known as "The Grange" at that time: the old house, which was located to the north east of the main building, was demolished and replaced by a modern office block also known as "The Grange".[16] Another modern facility known as "Northleigh House" was built just south of The Grange in 1974.[17]
The Princess Royal attended a reception for the Council of Occupational Therapists in County Hall on 19 April 2010[18] and a major programme of refurbishment works to convert the building into an open-plan working environment was completed in 2011.[19]
References
^"The County Council". Chichester Observer. 10 April 1889. p. 8. Retrieved 24 January 2024.
^"The West Sussex Times". The West Sussex Times. Horsham. 16 November 1889. p. 2. Retrieved 25 January 2024.