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Publication Account
Date 1977
Event ID 1017803
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Publication Account
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1017803
An early reference to the Tolbooth at Banff is in a 1551 grant of fishings to help aid the burgesses in the repair of the kirk, bell, tolbooth and 'divers and sundry uthir common and gud causes' within the burgh (Cramond, 1891, 379). A Tolbooth complete with a 'gilded weathercock' was re-erected in 1710, from which a number of prisoners escaped two years later (Cramond, 1891, 182, 183). The present Town House is on a raised area just behind the paved space known as the Plainstones. The steeple, a concave octagon with oval openings, was the work of one of the Adam brothers and was erected in the 1760s. The Town House itself was not built until the 1790s and included council offices as well as the jail.
Information from ‘Historic Banff: The Archaeological Implications of Development’ (1977).