Publication Account

Date 1996

Event ID 1018559

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Publication Account

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1018559

The castle is a four-storeyed L-plan tower of early 16th century date which measures 1 0.8m by 10.1m over walls 1.6m thick. In 1815 it was bought by the town council for £340, and in 1820 the Commissioners of Supply accepted plans by Kenneth Mathieson, a Glasgow architect, to convert it into a 'secure and salutary jail', with cells on the two upper storeys, at an estimated cost of £600. The town council undertook to fit up the first floor as a court-room at a cost of £185, but it is not certain whether this work was carried our. A new prison was built in Lewis Street in 1847, but occasional use was made of the cells in the castle until 1907.

The main external alterations were in the upper storeys, where Mathieson inserted a series of segmental-arched windows in heavy sandstone frames. He also heightened the S wall to replace the original gabled roof with a flat roof, which may have been used as an exercise-area, within a crenellated wall-head. In 1837 the W vault of the ground storey was in use as a lock-up, while there were three criminals' cells on the second floor and two larger debtors' rooms above. All are barrel-vaulted and all but one have fireplaces whose sandstone jambs bear many graffiti. They have heavy iron-plated doors, and their walls were similarly strengthened where they adjoined chimney-flues. Except for the women's cell, which is entered from the main newel-stair, access at each level is from a vaulted N corridor provided with an iron grilled gate.

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