Middlesex Guildhall

Middlesex Guildhall
General information
Type	Court building
Location	London
Address	Parliament Square, London, SW1P 3BD
Construction started	1906
Completed	1913
Renovated	2007–2009
Design and construction
Architect	J. S. Gibson
Renovating team
Renovating firm	Feilden+Mawson LLP

The Middlesex Guildhall is the home of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom and of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. It stands on the south-west corner of Parliament Square in London.

The location in Parliament Square was the site of the belfry of Westminster Abbey and it was used as a market from 1750 to 1800. The justices of the City and Liberty of Westminster took it over and an octagonal guildhall with a Doric portico was constructed by Samuel Pepys Cockerell in 1805. In 1889 Westminster became part of the County of London, outside the county of Middlesex. In the division of property between the Middlesex and London county councils, the guildhall at Westminster went to Middlesex in exchange for the Middlesex Sessions House in Clerkenwell. A neo-Tudor guildhall was constructed on the site in 1893 by F. H. Pownall.

The current building was built between 1912 and 1913, designed by J. S. Gibson, in what Pevsner called an "art nouveau gothic" style, and decorated with medieval-looking gargoyles and other architectural sculptures by Henry Charles Fehr. The county council and the Middlesex sessions were abolished in 1965 and the Guildhall continued to be used by the Greater London Quarter Sessions. After the abolition of the Quarter Sessions it was used as a Crown Court centre.

The Guildhall incorporates in the rear a doorway dating from the seventeenth century which was a part of the Tothill Fields Bridewell prison and moved to the site to be incorporated in the building.

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