[1] A moot hall, which was designed with arcading on the ground floor to allow markets to be held, was erected in the Middle Row (between the Buttermarket to the north and the Cornmarket to the south) in the High Street in 1509.

[2] In the late 1850s, following complaints that the 17th century market hall was inadequate for large public meetings, civic leaders decided to acquire the old building from Montagu Bertie, 6th Earl of Abingdon, to demolish it and to erect a new town hall, financed by public subscription, on the same site as part of the town's celebrations for the Golden Jubilee of Queen Victoria.

[4] The new building was designed by Henry James Tollit in the Jacobethan style, built by a local contractor, John Wells, and completed in 1887.

[2][7] The design involved a symmetrical main frontage with three bays facing northwest along the High Street; the central bay featured an segmental headed doorway flanked by Ionic order columns supporting an entablature; there was a three-light mullion window on the first floor, a four-light arched mullion window flanked by obelisks on the second floor and a clock tower with a small spire at roof level.

[8] The building featured extensively from the late 1990s in the crime drama television series, Midsomer Murders, as the fictional Causton Town Hall.