Publication Account

Date 1996

Event ID 1018579

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Publication Account

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1018579

This building occupies an extensive site in the NE angle of High Street and Castle Street, bounded to the E by Watergate. It contains two principal storeys and is of inverted E-plan, with a 32.5m S front to Castle Street, shorter return wings to High Street and Watergate, and a central wing to the rear. It was built in 1833-5 in a castellated Gothic style, appropriate to its function as a jail and its location overlooking Rothesay Castle. This style was retained in alterations of 1865-7 and ofthe late 1880s, both of which included extensive additions to the rear. Its masonry is of brown ashlar with orange-yellow sandstone dressings.

The main front has slightly-projecting angle-towers and groups of triple-lancet transomed windows recessed between pilaster-buttresses which rise to a crenellated parapet. A five stage central clock-tower with corbelled parapet contains the ogee-headed entrance-doorway. This is now at ground-floor level, but originally a double forestair rose to a first-floor entrance which in the 1880s was replaced by an oriel-window within a corbelled and crenellated balcony.

In the original arrangement the whole of the ground floor was devoted to prison-accommodation, with the jailer's house and further cells in the rear wing. The first floor housed 'a spacious court room in which the Sheriff, Burgh and Justice of the Peace courts are held, with the Town and Sheriff Clerks' offices, and other requisite apartments'. Extensive alterations were made following the closure of the jail in 1883, and the oval staircase to the rear of the entrance-tower is probably of that period. The building has undergone further alterations for use as local-government offices, but the Sheriff court-room retains its original position in the E part of the first floor, and to the W there is an imposing council-chamber with portraits of local notables.

The tower houses the original clock-mechanism, which was donated by the 2nd Marquis of Bute and made by Arnold, Dent and Co. of London in 1834. The bell was cast in the same year by Stephen Miller and Co. of Glasgow, and stands in its original position on the roof of the tower.

HISTORY

At least two previous tolbooths stood on the site of the present building, the first of them supposedly on the W side of Watergate. This was replaced in 1614 by a tolbooth in Castle Street, at the SW angle of the present site. A 'belhous' was added to this building in 1688, and an engraving of about this period shows a bird-cage bellcot surmounting the W gable above a first-floor doorway reached by a forestair. It underwent frequent alterations during the late 17th and 18th centuries, and was demolished in 1834.

In 1831 an Act of Parliament was obtained for improving Rothesay harbour and 'for building a Gaol, Court House, and Offices for the said Burgh and County'. Even before the act was passed, the Duke of Hamilton, proprietor of Arran, protested that the proposed buildings were 'much too expensive', and forwarded plans of the County Buildings at Kinross as a more suitable model. The present building was designed by lames Dempster, a Greenock architect, and the foundation stone was laid in 1833, when a contract was made with a group of local tradesmen. Work began in the E half of the site, allowing the retention of the old town-house until part of the building was completed. The contract price was almost £2,800, but the final cost was about £4,000.

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