[4] After civic leaders found that the town hall in the High Street was inadequate for their needs, they elected to construct a purpose-built town hall: they chose the site of Central Croydon railway station, which was redeveloped for council use in 1895, as part of a plan to install "Municipal Offices, Courts, a Police Station, Library and many other public purposes and yet leave a considerable margin of land which might be disposed of".

[7] Above each clockface was a keystone carved in the form of a human head, representing respectively the four cardinal points of the compass: an "Esquimaux" (north), a "Hottentot" (south), a "Chinaman" (east) and an "American Indian" (west).

[10] A war memorial, designed by James Burford and incorporating two bronze sculptures by Paul Raphael Montford, was erected in 1921.

[14][15] The whole building, including the council chamber, the mayor's parlour and committee rooms, was extensively renovated in the late-1980s and early 1990s.

This enabled parts of the building which were not required for council meetings to be re-purposed as an arts venue known as the Croydon Clocktower in 1994.