The first building on the site was a
medieval market hall which destroyed in a fire in 1791. Minehead had a very small electorate and a dominant patron, John Fownes Luttrell II of
Dunster Castle, which meant it was recognised by the
UK Parliament as a
rotten borough. Its right to elect
members of parliament was removed by the
Reform Act 1832. Following significant growth in the population, largely associated with the status of Minehead as a market town, the area became an
urban district in 1894. In the late 19th century the new civic leaders decided to demolish the old market house and replace it with a more substantial combined town hall and market house. The design involved a symmetrical main frontage with five bays facing onto The Parade; the central bay featured a porch involving a round headed doorway flanked by
Doric order columns and
brackets supporting an
entablature, a
balustrade and a broken
pediment. Internally, the principal municipal rooms, which included a
barrel vaulted library room, were laid out in the central section of the building around and behind which the market hall was located. The wide openings to the market hall were boarded up during the
Second World War to stop light escaping while the market traders continued to conduct business. The library room was converted for use as a council chamber after the library service moved to Bancks Street in 1962. It instead served as the meeting place and offices of Minehead Town Council from its formation in 1983 until, following the sale of the property to a developer, its relocation to Summerland Road in April 2017. Although the town hall was subsequently left vacant, a developer secured planning consent in January 2021 to convert it for residential use. ==References==