Publication Account
Date 1996
Event ID 1017936
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Publication Account
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1017936
This two-storeyed building' stands on the E side of High Street, almost opposite the medieval parish church of St Nicholas and abutting the Cross Keys Hotel. lt is rectangular on plan, measuring 16.3m by 6.5m, and is covered by a hipped and slated roof from which the chimney-stacks have been removed. The ashlar-built main (W) front has a central doorway and three bays of symmetrically-disposed windows to each side, but the ground-floor N window occupies the position of a former doorway. The base-course is chamfered and there are rusticated angle-quoins and a moulded eavescornice. The Sand E walls are of harled rubble. The building may be ascribed to the 17th century but it has undergone extensive later alterations.
The most distinctive feature of the main front is the doorway, which has a bolection-moulded surround and a pediment containing the arms of Scott of Buccleuch: on a bend a mullet between two crescents. Above the pediment there is a panel carved with two coronets above the initials E/FB and C / MLB and the date 1648. The initials are those of Francis, 2nd Earl of Buccleuch, and his wife Margaret Leslie, and the panel is said to have been brought from the grounds of Dalkeith Palace in the late 18th or early 19th century.
Internally the building is divided by a substantial cross-wall into a square S room and a larger rectangular N room on each floor. Against the N side of this wall a straight stair rises to the first-floor S room and continues with a dog-leg turn to the N room and a smaller room at the centre of the W front.While the moulded stone treads of its straight portion appear to be original, the wall abutting it to the N, and all the other internal walls with the exception of the cross-wall itself, appear to be additions to the original structure.
Beneath the S ground-floor room there is a flat-ceiled pit with earthen floor and rubble walls, some 2m square, known as the 'black hole'. It is entered by a trap-door in the floor of the room above, which was previously used as a prison, as was the corresponding first-floor room. The main ground-floor room served as a weigh-house on market-days, and that at first-floor level as a court-room. The interior of the building retains few early features, all fireplaces having been removed or blocked, and there have been various other modern alterations, notably to the openings of the rear (E) wall.
HISTORY
A tolbooth existed in Dalkeith in 1616,6 and although the 1648 date-panel is apparently not in situ, the present building probably belongs to the second half of the 17th century. In 1759 it was considered 'to have been the private prison and court house of the Regality ofDalkeith and the property of the family of BuccIeuch ... past all memory'. The appearance of the main front suggests that extensive refacing has been undertaken, probably in the 19th century. In 1759 consideration was given to converting part of the tolbooth to a school, but it continued to be used regularly as a jail until 1841. From 1835 the tolbooth housed the meetings and library of the Dalkeith Scientific Association, and it came to be known as the 'Scientific Hall'. In 1966 it was refurbished as a church hall by the Kirkcaldy architects Armstrong and Thomas." In front of the building are stones marking the site of the burgh gibbet.
Information from ‘Tolbooths and Town-Houses: Civic Architecture in Scotland to 1833’ (1996).
