yle,"[148] and have traced to English town
halls of the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Like the
Fairfax County Courthouse, these town halls were two-story brick or
stone buildings which presented to their front a gable-end,
ground-floor arcade (or piazza) covering the main opening onto the
street, an entrance set into the end wall, and, frequently, a cupola.
The town halls of Blandford in Dorset (1734), and Amersham in
Buckinghamshire (1682) illustrate these features with variations of
details.

No documentary evidence has been found to show how James Wren evolved
his design for the Fairfax County Courthouse; but it seems probable
that he knew of this style that was enjoying current popularity in
England, and that John Bogue, the "undertaker" who built the
courthouse, was familiar with the methods of constructing such
buildings, for Bogue had just come to America from England in 1795.

While the similarity of geometric and structural exterior design
strongly suggests that the Fairfax County Courthouse had its
architectural ancestry in the English town halls of that period, the
analogy is weaker when functions are compared. The courthouse for
Fairfax County was designed and used entirely as the seat of local
government. The commercial activity that was attracted to the
courthouse site on "court days" enjoyed no special privileges or
facilities in the building. In contrast, town halls in eighteenth
century England often served the dual purpose of providing a
facility for transaction of public business and carrying on the
commerce of the community. The style of the English town halls
provided space in the open arcade of the ground floor to house a
farmers' and tradesmen's market, and space in the second floor chamber
for the town council to meet and do its work.[149]

The origin of this type of building is not entirely clear. It is
difficult to imagine it growing naturally in the political and social
climate of the villages which grew up clustered around England's
medieval castles and monasteries. At the time when town-and-market
halls were common in the central squares of free towns in Italy,
Germany and the Low Countries, they were absent in England. Their
appearance in England dates from the seventeenth century when town
government developed its own identity, and when British political and
cultural alliances with the Dutch were established.[150]

Imported to Virginia as a form of courthouse building, th