[1] The building was originally commissioned as an assembly hall to commemorate the life of the former Prime Minister, Sir Robert Peel.

[2][3] The cost of construction was funded by a campaign of public subscription led by a local businessman, Benjamin Hargreaves of Arden Hall.

[4][5][6] The new building was designed by James F. Green and T. Birtwhistle in the neoclassical style, built in ashlar stone and opened as the "Peel Institute" in 1858.

[7][8] The design involved a symmetrical main frontage with seven bays facing onto Blackburn Road; the central section, which projected forward, featured a porte-cochère supporting a balustrade and a hexastyle portico with Corinthian order columns on the first floor with a pediment above.

[10] The Accrington Pals Battalion of the East Lancashire Regiment was formally raised by the mayor, Councillor John Harwood, inside the town hall in September 1914; the battalion subsequently marched past the building before preparing to deploy, initially to Egypt and then to the Western Front, during the First World War.