Placed to the south of Newgate Gaol, which took up part of the site of the old Sessions House, the new Sessions House was designed and constructed at the same time as the prison and opened in 1774. It shared the prison's damage by fire during the anti-Catholic Gordon riots of 6 June 1780 and its subsequent reinstatement.

The principal front of the Sessions House faced north across a courtyard towards Newgate Gaol, the west front aligned with the main front of the Gaol and linked by a rusticated wall. As with, say, the Guildhall south front, changes in design were made after the contract drawings were signed. As executed, the Sessions House facade consisted of a pedimented three-bay centre with three semi-circular-arched windows above a Tuscan portico over a windowless ground floor. Either side, single-bay wings were linked to the centre by narrower bays with minimal volutes. The upper storey had plain ashlar masonry, the lower storeys rock-faced rustication and a strongly modelled cornice, entablature, string courses and plinth marked each floor level. The pavilion ends had a square-headed window with voussoirs set in a 'blind' arch, the head of which was a lunette lighting the mezzanine.

Kalman (pp.112-13) describes the facade composition as having an affinity with Vanbrugh's north front of Seaton Delaval and Stroud (p.101) describes a 'turret-like feature of rusticated masonry with a semicircular aperture' (the pedestal shown on the elevation catalogued here) as 'distinctly Vanbrughian'. Vanbrugh was a good source for a building that had to express the dignity of law and justice next to the fearful austerity and astylarism of Newgate Gaol. That Dance had difficulty is evident in the changes he made between the contract and working elevations where the balance between areas of ashlar and rustication was revised and the portico changed. Was Dance trying to express in architecture the even-handedness of the Law that is represented in sculpture by Justice with her scales? Hence the contrast between the generous voids of an arcaded loggia over a colonnade in the centre and the tight, mannered openings of the ends; the smoothness of the upper storey and the deep joints and rough texture beneath; the vertical openings and emphatic horizontal mouldings and the stress on light and shade.

The executed plan did not differ much from that of the old Sessons House except for the single-storey, semicircular projection on the front of the centre block which housed twin stairs on a quadrant plan that took prisoners to and from the courtyard to the court rooms.

An early plan of the ground floor made before 15 April 1768 is shown on a drawing for Newgate Gaol ([SM D4/4/1]). It is close to but less developed than further variant plans at the Corporation of London Records Office (Surveyor's Justice Plans Nos 233 and 237) that show kitchens, pantry, wine cellar and two 'bail docks'.

A later plan - undated, drawn and signed by Dance, c.1806 (CLRO, Surveyor's Justice Plans No.238) - for the enlargement of the Sessions House towards the south is for a scheme made possible by the removal to Lincoln's Inn Fields of the College of Surgeons. A tender from Henry Peto of £5,179 was accepted on 19 November 1806 (CLRO City Lands Journals) for what was the first of many successive schemes throughout the 19th century for alterations, additions and new buildings - some unadopted - that lasted until the demolition of the Sessions House (now Central Criminal Courts) won in competition by E. W. Mountford (1855-1908) and opened in 1907. See the site plan and ground plan for Newgate Gaol that include the Sessions House ([SM D4/4/10] and [SM D4/4/1]). See also the general note on Newgate Gaol.

LITERATURE. Stroud pp.100-06, figs 33 a-b; H. Kalman, Catalogue of the Drawings Collection of the Royal Institute of British Architects, vol.C-F, 1972, p.59.

OTHER SOURCES. Corporation of London Records Office; Royal Institute of British Architects, (Early Works) Library, printed specifications, 1769; Victoria & Albert Museum, Prints and Drawings Department.