[1] The building was commissioned to replace the Corn Exchange in Broad Street, which had previously been used as a civic meeting place, and was largely paid for by the local member of parliament, Sir Edward Kerrison, 2nd Baronet.

[2] It was designed by Edward Buckton Lamb in the Italianate style, built in red and brown brick with rhombus-shaped sections of flint decoration and was completed in 1857.

[6] A clock was installed in the second stage of tower at the expense of a local brewer and mayor, Charles Tacon, to celebrate the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria in 1897.

[4] The building was the venue for the hotly-contested result in the 1906 Eye by-election, when the returning officer revealed that the Liberal Party candidate, Harold Pearson, had won by just 197 votes.

[8][9] The leader of the British Union of Fascists, Sir Oswald Mosley, addressed a crowd in the town hall in January 1939 and claimed that, under a government led by him, "nothing would be imported into England that could be produced in this country.