Constitutional Buildings, High Street, East Grinstead

Image: © Jo and Steve Turner Taken: 20 Sep 2009

Grade II Listed late 19th century municipal hall. Crawley News in a report about planning permission claims the hall was built in 1893. Indeed a picture in East Grinstead Through a Lens By David Gould taken about 1890 shows the Round House or West Buildings on the site prior to demolition. A picture reportedly from 1910 appears to show a set of steps up to a door in the centre of the first floor that is now a window; this is also clearly shown in a Francis Frith photo of 1895. Interestingly the street lamp on the wall outside the houses in the 1890 picture appears to be the same one on the steps to the door in Francis Frith's picture. Dorothy Hatswell in her book Secret East Grinstead tells us that the Court House once stood here and in 1684 the floor collapsed plummeting the whole trial in progress into the cellar with the exception of the judge's bench left suspended in mid air. Dorothy also reports that the building was quickly pulled down and re-built and that the last assizes were held there in 1799 (the date of the last public hanging). The Session House, rendered redundant by the loss of the assizes was variously used as a meat and vegetable market, a playhouse and presumably a market house and town hall, until demolished in 1828 during the levelling of the High Street.

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