[1] The site currently occupied by the town hall was previously the location of the Talbot Inn, a public house which dated back at least to the early 17th century.

[2] The inn was the venue for the examination of witnesses in a legal case heard in January 1639 in which Sir Andrew Kniveton claimed he had been libelled by William Greaves.

[3] A visit by two travellers to the Talbot Inn was described by Izaak Walton in his book The Compleat Angler, first published in 1653,[4] and, it was in the Market Place, outside the inn, that Charles Edward Stuart declared his father, James Francis Edward Stuart, King of England, Wales and Scotland, while passing through Ashbourne in December 1745 during the Jacobite rising.

[12] Following local government re-organisation in 1974,[13] the new Ashbourne Town Council established its offices in the building and started to use it as its meeting place.

[15] An extensive programme of works to restore the crumbling façade of the building was completed to a design by Guy Taylor Associates in October 2018.