Cockermouth's first town hall was a moot hall in the Market Place, dating back at least to the seventeenth century. When it became too far gone to repair, civic leaders chose a new site on the north side of Main Street, on the west bank of the River Cocker. The result was a Tudor Revival frontage of three bays, symmetrically composed, with a short flight of steps leading up to a centre door framed by a four-centred arch. The ground-floor windows echoed that arch; the upper windows used sashes with hood moulds. At the roofline ran a modillioned cornice. Inside, the building housed a courtroom, a bank, and a newsroom under one roof, and for the early years of the new municipal council it served as town hall as well as judicial seat.

By the early 1930s, the council's responsibilities had outgrown the building. In 1934, civic government moved out, relocating to an old Methodist chapel on Market Street that became Cockermouth Town Hall. The Old Courthouse was sold for commercial use, and from the 1970s remained in a single family's hands for the rest of the twentieth century. A series of tenants made the space their own: an antiques market, a hairdresser, and from 2007 a restaurant run by the Ryan family with the dryly perfect name of the Honest Lawyer. For a generation, Main Street's old courthouse served roast dinners where once it served writs.

Cockermouth sits at the meeting of the Cocker and the Derwent, which makes it scenic and makes it vulnerable. The November 2009 floods, the worst the town had seen in living memory, badly damaged the building. In November 2021, surveyors found that the stone foundation beneath it had been eroded. The structure was declared unsafe, and divers were sent down to make temporary repairs. In July 2022, a London property consultant named Samiul Ahmed bought the courthouse at auction. The hope of restoration did not survive long. In October 2023, the rear of the building collapsed into the river. In January 2024, the owner was given a formal deadline to repair it. Talks broke down, and in March 2024 Cumberland Council stepped in to begin stabilisation and demolition. Then Storm Lilian arrived in August and pulled the scaffolding into the river too. What the courthouse will become next, if anything, is uncertain. Even the cure has begun to fail.