Publication Account

Date 1996

Event ID 1018558

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Publication Account

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1018558

The original town-house comprises a two-storeyed rectangular block measuring 11.8m across the three-bay N front by 8.75m, with a steeple 15m high rising above the slightly advanced central bay. Its masonry is of rubble, rendered in the Nand E fronts and with freestone dressings, all heavily painted, and the hipped roof is slated, while the timber-framed spire is covered with lead.

In the central bay there is a doorway, now altered to a window, with a round-headed glazed tympanum below a moulded pediment which is linked to a freestone band in the side-bays. At first-floor level there is a carved panel bearing the burgh arms, installed in 1886, and the steeple rises above the moulded eaves-cornice in two low stages, the upper one incorporating a short length of balustrade. The square clockstage bears a plaque of 1936 commemorating the donor of the present clock, and above its four segmental wall-head pediments there is a low octagonal belfry with five circular openings, which carries the short octagonal spire. The ground-floor doors and windows in the side-bays date from their later use as shops, and there is some evidence that the N front may have been arcaded. The fenestration of the sidewalls is irregular, but a blocked high-level window in the W wall of the ground floor may relate to the use of this area as a prison. A blocked door in the E wall was exposed in 1996.

The interior preserves few early features, but two roundheaded arches in the massive side-walls of the steeple gave access to the entrance-lobby at the foot of the central stair from the front areas of the side-bays, which may originally have been open. Until the opening of the castle prison in 1822 the ground storey included a guard-house and jail, and the first floor a debtors' prison whose removal allowed the enlargement of the council-chamber. The ground storey was divided into two shops in 1837, and the court-room appears to have been housed in the E part of the upper floor.

The E front of the added block of 1855, fronting Church Street, has a four-bay ground-floor arcade, formerly open, while the first floor displays three pilastered bays containing large round-headed windows and carrying a gabled pediment. There are three windows of similar type in the upper part if the S wall. The interior of the block has been altered, but in 1988 traces of the N gable of the much lower market-house of 1802 were identified against the exterior of the S wall of the original town-house.

HISTORY

The old tolbooth, which contained ajail on the ground floor, was ruinous by 1775, as was the church which lay immediately to the S, and the council accepted plans for rebuilding both, given in by Edward Wallace, mason, and Thomas Hall. A contract was made with Archibald Paterson, mason, and John McBride, wright, but it was soon decided that 'the Town's funds will not answer to b'uild both at one time '. A revised price of £270 was agreed for the town-house only, 'adding to the height of the steeple four or five foots more', and the work was completed in June 1776. The adjacent market-house was built in 1802 by John Hornsby, mason, at a cost of £ 146,while the corn-exchange and court-room that replaced it in 1855 cost £842. Following the opening of a new town hall in Lewis Street in 1874, the old building was used by various organisations, including the fire brigade and the Athenaeum Club, before becoming the home ofStranraer Museum.

Information from ‘Tolbooths and Town-Houses: Civic Architecture in Scotland to 1833’ (1996).