One of only a few surviving examples of a neighbourhood board school, built under the authority of the Elementary Education Act of 1870, to survive in substantial form. These were the Day Industrial Schools 1878-80 by Thomas Oliver.

Replaced the old town hall at Greenesfield (HER 5612). John Johnstone won the competition to design the new town hall in 1863. Second prize went to Edward Watson. The Town Surveyor was instructed to produce a design embodying the best elements of each. The project was beset with problems. Arguments as to whether the building should face High or West Street. Plans were finally agreed for a High Street town hall in 1865, estimated at a colossal £22,300. Excavations for the foundations penetrated the partiaaly worked High Main Coal Seam, causing the partial collapse of properties in Nelson Street. Work ceased and the town council and County Court Judge took up temporary residence at the Queen's Head Inn. Johnstone was then appointed as architect for a West Street town hall, to cost no more than £12,000. Work began in 1867 and was completed in January 1870. The town hall also contained a police station with cells, drill yard and fire-engine house, the magistrates and county courts and large public hall with first and second class refreshment rooms. The building was Italianate in style. The front elevation displayed symbols of the town including goat's heads and the figures of Commerce, Industry and Justice and a statue of Queen Victoria. A fairly typical example of a mid C19 small town hall, lacking the grandeur and scale of big-city contemporaries such as Leeds and Manchester, but as the first purpose-built structure of its kind in the borough, it must have seemed a magnificent achievement for such a comparatively impoverished town. It continued to serve the council into the 1980s, the public hall converted into the council chamber in 1973-4. But by then council business had outgrown Johnstone's building and a new civic centre was opened in 1987 on Regent Street {Taylor and Lovie, 2004}.