Former Town Hall, Market Square, Marlow

Image: © Jo and Steve Turner Taken: 9 Apr 2007

Grade II* Listed as The Crown Hotel in 1949 this Market Hall was built in 1807 by the architect Samuel Wyatt. The clock is from 1805 given to the town by Pascoe Grenfell and came from the Old Market House which stood in the road where the Obelisk now is. The clock was refurbished and the mechanism replaced with the old mechanism put on display in the assembly room in 2013. The Crown Hotel next door took over the assembly room, which became the ballroom, although public meetings and entertainments continued to be held there until the 1960s. Then in 1886 the whole building became an extension to the hotel. It has associations with literary celebrities and was the meeting place of the Omar Khayyam Club. It featured in Jerome K Jerome's 1889 travel novel ‘Three Men in a Boat’. During the 1930s. The hotel's trade declined and the original Crown Hotel next door was converted to shops. This building continued as the Crown Hotel but after WWII it was no longer residential. The original Crown next door that is 4 and 5 Market Square is a Grade II Listed building. Originally 16th century 4 and 5 is now a 17th to 18th century building. The Crown reportedly existed here by 1596 and closed in its ‘new’ premises in June 2008 having been earlier rebranded as ‘R Home’ (Google Sep. 2008 street view shows the Town Hall clad in scaffold). A search for the Crown of Census, Trade Directories and Archives lists the following owners/occupiers, 1620-1650 Wooden family, 1673 Thomas Lloyd, 1717 Mr Hall, 1830 George Westbrook (& posting house), 1839-1844 James Franklin (& posting house), 1851- 1853 Thomas Furnell (& Excise Office), 1861 Thomas Barnett, 1863-1871 William Paine, 1877-1883 Mrs Susan West (& posting house), 1891 Henry Calf, 1899 William Eades Cole, 1901 Julia Elizabeth Cole, 1903 Miss M. J. Feltham (manageress), 1907 Thomas Halse-Hull, 1911 Horace E Scott and 1915 Oliver P Taylor described as ‘the oldest established hotel in Marlow (A.A.); nice garden, tennis lawn & garage (with inspection pit); large hall for dances or parties; billiard room etc.; near river & station’. The Obelisk just in view in the last picture is also Grade II Listed and was erected in 1822 and it acts as a milestone and sign post.

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