THESE vintage photographs show how Colchester’s High Street might have changed, but one of its building has remained largely the same.

The Town Hall, where the council is based and formerly the home of the Magistrates’ Court for many years, has been the focus of civic duties for more than 800 years.

This is its third town Hall, designed by John Belcher after he won a competition in 1897.

The first Town Hall, the Moot Hall, was built in 1160 and the second, which was three storeys with a stone-faced front, was created in 1844.

Building work on the current building began in 1898 and it was officially opened by the Earl of Rosebery in May of 1902.

Its function rooms are still used for their original purpose, including public and private functions such as weddings.

Baroque in design, its 162ft Victorian tower was presented by industrialist and renowned Colchester businessman James Paxman. The statue at the top was once thought to be of the town’s patron saint, St Helena, but it is actually the Virgin Mary.

In direct contrast to the two previous Town Halls, this most recent one was not stone-faced but built of red brick with a range of sculptures including states of figures associated with Colchester, including Thomas Lord Audley, Boudicca and 16th-century philosopher William Gilbert.

As these photographs, taken through the decades from the 1950s onwards, show the building has had its fair share of work carried out involving the putting up of scaffolding. It has also seen a number of incidents including a High Street bomb scare in the High Street in 1988.