Publication Account
Date 1996
Event ID 1018563
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Publication Account
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1018563
This tolbooth is situated on the S side of the main street, abutted to E and W by later houses which encase both angles of its rear wall. The W part of the ground storey is occupied by a wide pend which gave access to the shore. While the main part of the building may be ascribed to the early 18th century, there appears to be a masonry-break at first-floor level and part of an earlier building may have been incorporated. The burgesses were granted the right to have a tolbooth when the burgh of barony was erected in 1525, and the building was mentioned in 1586, although its exact site is not known.
The building is two-storeyed and rectangular on plan, measuring 11.4m across its main (N) front by 8.9m. At the centre of the main front there is a steeple, 18m high and only 3.1m square, which is abutted to the E by a simple forestair. The masonry is ofharled rubble, with dressed margins to the main windows. The gabled roof of the main block is pantiled, while the steeple was formerly slated, but is now covered with copper. A panel set into the S wall of the steeple, now badly weathered, preserves the outline of a coronet and remains of an inscription which has been recorded as reading: THIS FABRIC WAS BUILT BY EARL DAVID WEMYSS & TOWN FOR THE CRIBBING OF VICE AND SERVICE TO CROWN. A lower panel bears the arms of the Wemyss family, with the initials E / DW for 'Earl David Wemyss'. These probably refer to David, 3rd Earl of We my ss from 1705 to 1720, rather than to the 2nd Earl who died in 1679.
Parallel to the street at ground-floor level there are two vaulted cells which were entered from the pend but whose doors are now blocked, along with the window ofthe S cell. The first floor now forms one large room, but this was formerly partitioned and the W portion retains a decorated plaster ceiling of late 18th-century type. The existence of two fireplaces in the E wall suggests that the E half was further divided. The roof-structure, which has been rebuilt, incorporated a number of ships' timbers. A bell for the tolbooth was 'brought home' in 1678 by a local mariner, probably from the Netherlands. The present bell and clock were installed in 1901 by lames Ritchie and Son.
Information from ‘Tolbooths and Town-Houses: Civic Architecture in Scotland to 1833’ (1996).
