Publication Account
Date 1996
Event ID 1018113
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Publication Account
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1018113
In 1365 David II granted to the burgh a strip of ground measuring 30.5m by 9.75m on the W side of their old tholoneum, to build a new one. This building may have been the pretorium mentioned in a rental of 1369 which, it has been suggested, lay in a venell SE ofSt Giles's Church, and it was probably burnt in the English invasion of 1385. In the following year Robert II granted an area of 18.3m by 9.15m on the N side of the market-place, by a charter endorsed 'the charter of the Belhous'. The original building was probably the 'towre of the auld tolbuith' which was repaired in 1575. The E block that survived until 1817 appears from its style to have been an addition of the 15th century. In 1501 a contract was made with John Marser, mason, for 'completing of the towre' with ashlar.
Extensive repairs were carried out in 1555-6, especially in the area of the 'gre(a)t yet'. By 1562, however, the building was so ruinous that Queen Mary ordered it to be demolished and the Lords of Session threatened to remove their court to St Andrews. The council provided accommodation nearby (infra), and temporarily repaired the tolbooth for used as a prison, but the older W part was evidently demolished in or before 1610. In that year, following instructions from the privy council 'to big ane wairdhous', a contract was made with Andrew Symsoun, mason, for building 'the new Brysoun Hous in the awld Tolbuith bewest the present Tolbuith quhair the grund is presentlie red (cleared)'. A series of booths outside the W gable of this new block was rebuilt in 1678 as a twostoreyed extension, whose flat roof was used from 1785 for public executions. The tolbooth was demolished in 1817 despite protests led by Waiter Scott, who was to immortalise it as the 'Heart of Midlothian' in his novel published the following year.
The outline of the building is marked by brass studs in the paving, and the position of its main entrance by a heart-shaped setting of cobblestones. The 15th-century E block measured about 10.5m from N to S by 7.5m and that of 1610 was 11.5m from E to W by 10.5m, the overall dimensions being close to those spec ified in the charter of 1386. Both blocks were fourstoreyed, with dormer windows in the building of 1610 whose upper storey was an addition to the original contract. The older building was ashlar-built and decorated on the N and S gable-walls with ornate niches, and the ogee-headed entrance-doorway was in a circular stair-tower at the SE angle. There was also a projecting tower for an internal stair at the centre of the S wall of the addition of 1610, flanked at each side by a window-bay. The upper stages of the N wall of this block, which were defined by string-courses, were also of two bays, but the round-headed windows of the ground storey may have occupied an infilled arcade.
The ground storeys of both blocks were vaulted and contained shops as well as accommodation for the jailer and, from about 1787, the guard-house. The principal hall, lit originally by large windows in the end-walls and E wall, occupied the first floor of the E block, with a felons' room containing the stocks and an iron cage on the floor above. Latterly the hall was used as a day-room for debtors, and a pulpit was kept there for the use of the minister who acted as chaplain. Most of the rooms on the upper floors of the 1610 block were allocated to debtors, but the first-floor one nearest the hall was used as a tap-room.
Information from ‘Tolbooths and Town-Houses: Civic Architecture in Scotland to 1833’ (1996).
