The following text is from the original listed building designation:
1. 944 DANE JOHN
Municipal Buildings TR l457 SE 8/479
II GV
2, Mid C19, 3 storeys attics and basements cement-rendered. Slate roof, Left side has 2 pedimented dormers with stone coping and dropped cornice with bracket cornice to centre portion. Left side ground floor has a 3 light bay divided by plain pilasters. Central stone porch with cornice and plain pilasters. Round-headed doorcase. End has a late C19 extension of 3 storeys with an oriel window. Right side has 2 fluted Doric doorcases.
Municipal Buildings, Nos 12, 12A & Nos 14 to 23 (consec) form a group.
Listing NGR: TR1479357476

Description from record TR 15 NW 696:
The Canterbury civil-defence Control Centre, containing the Report and Control Rooms, from which civil-defence activity in Canterbury was coordinated, were completed a little over a week before the outbreak of the Second World War. It was housed in specially constructed underground apartments behind the Municipal Buildings (now Chantry Hall) fronting the Dane John Gardens; ‘dull red lamps [indicated] the path which led to the steps’ and telephone cables were admitted through an underground duct. (There had been plans for the Municipal Buildings to form the focus of a Civic Centre, where the council and the police would have their headquarters, but these had been shelved with the onset of war.) Access to the Control Centre was from the Municipal Buildings themselves, and directly from Marlowe Avenue. Over the coming months and years various rooms in the Municipal Buildings themselves were colonised, and the Centre itself seems to have sprouted an extension. In early September 1939, an exhaust fan was fitted in the Control Centre ‘to aid ventilation’ and rest accommodation was made available for Centre personnel ... men in the ‘Committee Room’ of the Municipal Buildings, women in the ‘City Treasurer’s Office.’ Williamson described the use of the Control Room on various occasions around 1940: ‘on the wall hung a very large map of the City upon which our Civil Defence Plotting Officer, marked [with flags] the positions of the bombs as they were reported; he also plotted the number of ambulances, rescue parties and cars for slightly wounded persons as they were sent out to one area or another .. [A] "lookout" went to the top of the Municipal Buildings to see what was going on ... We were sitting round the table in the Control Room with the officers in their appropriate places; the Controller at the head of the table; the Medical Officer of Health at his telephone; with the various clerks and messengers standing waiting for orders; and three or four telephonists waiting for incoming calls; the plotting officer stood before the map. In July 1941 estimates were sought for an extension to contain an ‘interviewing room,’ and this does seem to have been completed. In June 1942, after some air-raid damage, the owner of the adjoining Thyra House (9 Dane John), which the Council had long wanted for their Civic Centre and now needed more urgently with the added pressure of civil-defence, decided to move out. The Council leased it and added it to the complex.
Owner : Unknown
Publicly accessible : Unknown
How accessed for survey :
Tourism Potential :
Condition : unknown
Date of visit :

English Heritage, List of Buildings of Special Architectural or Historic Interest (Map). SKE16160.

Canterbury City Council General Purposes Committee, 01/01/35, General Purposes Committee, folder of letters relating to the Canterbury Municipal Buildings (Unpublished document). SKE14721.

Williamson C., 01/01/46, Though the Streets Burn (Bibliographic reference). SKE14722.