In 1584 Elizabeth I breathed some life into the town by awarding it two parliamentary seats. A town hall was built in the 17th century. However, these seats ultimately made Newtown borough one of the most notorious of the rotten boroughs, prevalent in the UK before the 19th century reforms. By the time of the 1832 Reform Act that abolished the seats, a survey found that Newtown had just fourteen houses and twenty-three voters, whilst massively larger municipal areas with many more voters had less representation.