Until the mid-20th century, Derby Hall on Market Street accommodated the local council offices, but was no longer fit for purpose.^[2] The new building was designed, following an architectural competition, by Reginald Edmonds in the Neo-Georgian style in the 1930s.^[3] Construction was delayed by the Second World War and it was only officially opened by Queen Elizabeth II on 22 October 1954.^[4][5][6] The design incorporated an assembly hall which became known as the Elizabethan Suite.^[7]

The Whitehead Clock Tower, a memorial to Walter Whitehead, a local surgeon, dedicated in June 1914^[8] and George Frampton's 'cheering fusilier', a tribute to those soldiers who had died in the Second Boer War, erected in 1920,^[9] are both structures which predate the current town hall and stand in Whitehead Garden to the south of the building.^[10] The garden itself was a gift from Sidney and Katherine Whitehead of Stormer Hill in Bury to commemorate the lives of seven people who were killed in Chapel Street by a V-1 flying bomb on 24 December 1944 during the Second World War.^[11][12]

The town hall was the headquarters of the County Borough of Bury until 1974 when it became the headquarters of the enlarged Metropolitan Borough of Bury.^[13] A three-dimensional relief of the enlarged borough's coat of arms, designed by Diana Childs, was installed in the council chamber in the mid-1970s.^[14] The Prince of Wales visited the town hall for a lunch meeting with the civic dignitaries on 14 December 1977.^[15]

In July 1992 Queen Elizabeth II chose the town hall as her destination on her inaugural journey on the Manchester Metrolink; she had lunch in the building on her arrival.^[16][17]

The building had to be closed for weddings and other public events in July 2020 after part of the ceiling on the second floor collapsed.^[18]