Bray Town Hall, Municipal building on Main Street in Bray, Ireland.
Bray Town Hall is a Tudor Revival building on Main Street, designed by Thomas Newenham Deane and Guy Dawber and completed in 1884. Its symmetrical three-bay front has a segmental-arched central opening with iron gates, paired lancet windows, half-timbered oriel windows and gables with heraldic carvings. A two-stage octagonal fleche with clock faces rises at roof level.
Lord and Lady Brabazon of nearby Killruddery House commissioned the hall in the late 1870s to replace Bray's first municipal building, a market house in the north of the town. Thomas Newenham Deane and Guy Dawber designed it in the Tudor Revival style, and Wardrop & Son built it in red brick with mock timber framing for £6,359. It was completed for a town commissioners' meeting on 19 May 1884, and the ground floor stayed in use for weekly markets until the 1940s.
The building's name in Irish is Halla Baile Bhré. From 1911 the Ancient Order of Hibernians used the hall, and the local branch of the Irish Citizen Army, formed in 1913, met there too. The ground floor hosted weekly markets until the 1940s, and the Bray Heritage Centre was based in the hall from 1985 until it moved to the old courthouse in 1993.
Bray Town Hall stands at the corner of Main Street, Killarney Road and Vevay Road, with the wyvern fountain in front of the site. The ground floor, once an open arcade for weekly markets, now holds a McDonald's restaurant; the former first-floor council chamber is not open to the public.
The fountain in front of the building was unveiled in 1881, three years before the hall itself opened. Its wyvern holds a shield with the Brabazon coat of arms, a nod to Lord and Lady Brabazon of nearby Killruddery House, who commissioned the town hall.
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