THE old Town Hall is probably Royal Wootton Bassett’s best-known historic landmark.

Had it not been for a late Victorian restoration project, however, it wouldn’t have survived into the 20th century.

Our main picture is taken from one of two scrapbooks of images found in a forgotten corner of a former office in the Adver’s old Victoria Road headquarters.

It is marked: “The Town Hall, Wootton Bassett, restored 1889.”

Only in that year did the structure, which famously stands on stone pillars, take on the timbered appearance so familiar now.

The Town Hall was built in or around 1690, and was provided as a gift by Laurence Hyde, an important political fixer and ally of King Charles II, who had been elected Wootton Bassett’s MP 11 years earlier and made Earl of Rochester in 1682.

In addition to having an upper chamber for the market town’s council meetings, the building was used as place to store commercial goods - and sometimes local wrongdoers.

In the centuries before police stations became widespread, it was quite common for minor criminals to be held at town halls and other municipal buildings until the next court hearing, or in some cases until they sobered up.

Wootton Bassett’s criminals were locked up in what is now the open space among the pillars which is occupied by an information board and the staircase.

By the 1880s nearly 200 years of heavy use had taken its toll on the structure. Surviving photographs suggest it was dilapidated at best and near-derelict at worst, with a sagging roof and external rendering which had seen much better days.

Although many local people voiced horror at the possible removal of what was already an integral part of the town’s history, demolition seemed the building’s most likely fate.

By that time the Town Hall’s owner was Sir Henry Meux, a baronet and member of a wealthy brewing dynasty, who was evidently moved by the groundswell of public support for the building.

A programme of extensive external and internal repair and renovation began, and the building was left looking much as it does now.

The structure has served as the town’s museum for 52 years.

The print from the scrapbook in the Adver’s Victoria Road building seems to have been a souvenir issued to mark the completion of the project, perhaps intended for framing.

We wonder whether other copies survive.