Cambridge Guildhall
The city council's seat on Market Hill, a 1939 Neo-Georgian hall on a site that has served the town since the 1220s.
Cambridge Guildhall fills the south side of Market Hill, between Peas Hill and Guildhall Street. It is owned and run by Cambridge City Council, whose seat of government it is, and it is Grade II listed. The building you see today was completed in 1939 in a Neo-Georgian style, at a cost of £150,000.
A civic site with deep roots
Public business has been done here for the best part of eight centuries. In 1224 Henry III granted the town a house on the plot for use as a prison, and by 1270 the premises had become the tolbooth, the place where tolls were gathered on entry to the town and on market trade. Visiting acting companies performed there in the 1560s and the 1590s. The tolbooth was rebuilt in 1782 to a design by James Essex, and a neoclassical shire house of 1747 stood just to its north; a wooden bridge across Butter Row linked the pair, and from the late 1840s the two together went by the name of the guildhall. An assembly hall with a reference library beneath followed in 1862, and that part survived the 1939 rebuilding, which was absorbed into the new structure.
What goes on inside
The building holds a bigger hall and a smaller one, named accordingly. Both are hired out for stand-up, conferences, weddings, craft fairs, concerts and lectures, and the University of Cambridge uses the building for some examinations. The courts sat here until a purpose-built courthouse opened on East Road in June 2004. Out on Guildhall Street stands a sculpture called Talos, made in 1950 and put in place in 1973.
Practical notes
Because the halls are event spaces rather than a standing attraction, what you can see depends on the day. Check the council's listings before planning a visit, and pair it with a wander across the neighbouring market square.
Nearby
Within a few minutes' walk
