Description of Historic Place

The Kings County Court House consists of a two-storey brick and stone Second Empire building with a mansard roof. Completed in 1872, it is situated on a parcel of land on Main Street overlooking the main square in the Town of Hampton.

Heritage Value

Completed in 1872 at a cost of $14,000 under the design of prominent Saint John architect J.T.C. McKean, the Kings County Court House’s significance lies in its architectural features, typical of centralized court houses built in the Maritime provinces in the last quarter of the 19th century. By the 1870s, most county court houses accommodated the county municipal offices, the registry office and courtroom in solid, two-storey, fire-proof edifices such as this.

This public building has been used as a courthouse and registry office since its opening, and housed municipal and county council offices until the late 1960's. It is a distinguished brick and stone structure of Second Empire style that illustrates the importance given to the architecture and material richness of such a public building during the late-Victorian era. The upper floor courtroom is dramatic in its scale, fine detail and degree of preservation.

Source: Province of New Brunswick, Department of Wellness, Culture and Sport, Heritage Branch, Historic Places File #130, “Kings County Court House”

Character-Defining Elements

The character-defining elements that describe the Kings County Court House include:
- the central location of the building facing the town square, set back from the street with a large grassed yard along its frontal orientation, creating a highly visible civic presence;
- Second Empire elements including the bellcast mansard roof, slightly projecting central tower, rectangular massing, flat-roofed arched front portico with side stairways, roof eaves with decorative wood brackets, and slender arched windows;
- the material palette of the building, consisting primarily of red brick with light brown sandstone beltcourses;
- additional decorative stonework including the slightly pointed stone arches with their alternating brown and red polychromatic arrangement, the rounded windowsills, stylized Ionic portico capitals (since damaged), and the carved tower medallion which reads: “KING’S COUNTY COURT HOUSE 1871”;
- weathered copper along the roof hips;
- painted wood at the ornate cornices with their profiled mouldings and brackets;
- the rough-faced, roughly squared red sandstone ashlar treatment of the stone foundation wall, rising three feet above grade, capped by a smoothly cut brown sandstone beltcourse;
- the roof tower’s decorative gable dormer supported by a pair of turned wooden columns, on either side of a medallion displaying the scales of justice encircled by the latin legal phrase “fiat justitia ruat caelum,” meaning “let justice be done, though the heavens fall”;
- the symmetrically equal seven-bay single-window arrangement of the front façade with its central doors and rooftop brick chimneys, offset by the side façade with its central groupings of three windows at each floor;
- the fenestration throughout, with wood framed 2-over-2 single-hung windows of a semi-circular arched profile at the second floor, and a similar, but slightly truncated, arched profile on the main floor.

The character-defining elements relating to the interior include:
- the distinctive spatial qualities of the second floor two-storey height courtroom. It is characterized by an elegantly decorated coved coffered ceiling with a deep overhang along the perimeter, supported by large curved bracing brackets decorated with circular mouldings;
- the original darkly stained wood courtroom furniture and fittings still in use including the prisoner’s docket, stenographer’s bench, raised judge’s bench, and the long railing separating the public from the court, featuring turned spindles, thick railings, and arched panels in places;
- the stairway’s robust newel post and stained wood railing, supported by of a string of thick turned spindles;
- miscellaneous metal items including a number of secure vault doors and the cast iron coal fireplaces throughout;
- the wide decorative moulding throughout the building at the doors, room openings, base trims, and exposed corners;
- the painted carved wood British coat-of-arms above the door behind the judge’s bench;
- the exposed vaulted masonry structure throughout the basement, comprised of brick and roughly cut stone.