The town hall was promoted by the mayor, J.R. Wolfendon, in the early 1860s. The cost was expected to be between £70000 and £80,000 but more than doubled to £167,000, equivalent to £ in. Bolton Corporation held a competition for a new town hall design in the 1860s. It was won by a pupil of Cuthbert Brodrick, architect William Hill from Leeds whose design was very similar to that of the 1858 Leeds Town Hall. It was opened in June 1873 by Albert Edward, Prince of Wales. Portsmouth Guildhall, also designed by Hill in 1890, is a similar, slightly larger copy of the town hall. In the early 1930s the town hall was extended and a crescent of civic buildings was built to the rear on a new street to provide office space. The extension matches the Victorian building externally, but is plain inside and contains offices. The town hall had a central hall lit by a clerestory that was gutted by fire on 14 November 1981. It was rebuilt as two public halls, the Albert Hall and Festival Hall. The halls are surrounded by an outer ring of offices. In 1978 Fred Dibnah made repairs to the clock tower and its 16 stone pillars. Whilst repairing the tower he gilded the sphere at the top. During the cold war, the county standby nuclear bunker was located directly below the town hall. It dates to the second world war and would have been modernised to offer protection from nuclear attack.
Architecture
The original building on a rectangular plan is designed in the neoclassical style in the form of a temple with a tall baroque-style clocktower. The town hall has a high basement storey and two principal floors above in sandstoneashlar which is rusticated at basement level. It has a broad flight of steps up to a five-bay portico with a pediment in which there is a high-relief sculpture by William Calder Marshall. All the other architectural sculpture inside and out is by Burstall and Taylor, including the main staircase, the portico and the lions which flank the steps. Either side of the entrance are five-bay ranges of two storeys with round-arched windows to the first floor. A quarter-chiming clock by Potts of Leeds was installed in the tower in 1871. Bolton Town Hall's design was reused by original architect William Hill as the template to build Portsmouth Civic Town Hall in 1890, a near identical twin. Portsmouth's Town Hall was renamed Portsmouth Guildhall in 1926 when Portsmouth was elevated to city status.
The Civic Centre on Le Mans Crescent, housing the Bolton Museum, library, health clinics, and courts, was built in 1932–39 to the designs of Bradshaw Gass and Hope. Its plan is slightly asymmetric with end pavilions flanking a shallow crescent. There was previously a police station within the northern half of the building adjacent to the Magistrates' Court. This has been converted to offices although the former cells are still used for holding those facing transfer to prison or awaiting appearances before the court. The building has a steel frame faced in sandstone ashlar with parapets and a slate roof. It has three central arches accessing Cheadle Square. The Civic Buildings are Grade II listed.
