The town hall on Bedford Square is the centrepiece of the Duke of Bedford's mid-nineteenth century rebuild of Tavistock. It is a confident Gothic Revival pile in local green granite, designed by Edward Rundle and completed in 1864, with a steep slate roof and a clock tower that anchors the view from every direction.
It is not a museum and you cannot generally go in unless an event is on, but the exterior is one of the best examples of Victorian civic architecture in west Devon. Together with the Pannier Market arcade and the rebuilt Bedford Hotel opposite, it gives the town centre an unusual coherence — a planned mining boomtown wearing its prosperity on its sleeve.