Publication Account

Date 1996

Event ID 1018583

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Publication Account

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1018583

The tolbooth stands on a raised terrace on the S side of High Street, its prominence enhanced by later lowering of the street level. It comprises a main block of 17th-century origin, and a five-storeyed steeple of 1720 projecting at the N front. A forestair rising along the Nand E walls of the steeple gives access from street level to the terrace and to the first-floor entrance of the main block. The building is constructed of a combination of harled rubble and dressed sandstone, and the roof of the main block is tiled to the front like that of the adjacent Rosebery Memorial Hall of 1893.

The main block has been rectangular on plan, measuring 5.5m in depth, but because of rebuilding to the E in 1893 only about 10m of its length is preserved. The entrance-area, dormer-windows and chimneys were altered at the same time. The central and W portions of the ground storey, including two doorways with chamfered surrounds in the N wall, may be ascribed to the 17th century. The W part of this storey was in use as a weigh-house by 1641, housing a beam and weights imported from Holland, while the remainder probably served as a prison. I The first floor was extensively altered in the 18th century, and in 1770 it was fitted up as a new court-room and a council-chamber. Despite its limited size the first floor of the steeple was also used as a court-room, its fittings surviving as late as the 1890s, and in 1813 the ringing-chamber was converted to a writing-office for the town clerk.

The lower part of the N front of the steeple at ground-floor level is built of sandstone ashlar, as are the rusticated quoins, the window-margins and the moulded string-courses dividing the stages, while the remainder is harled. A small oval panel in the N wall below the first-floor string-course bears the burgh arms within mantling of 18th-century character. The existing octagonal slate-hung belfry and slated spire date from 1807, but the belfry was altered in 1888 to house a new clock and large clock-faces commemorating the jubilee of Queen Victoria.

The walls enclosing the passage through the steeple at the level of the terrace were constructed in 1832, and the arches in its E and W walls may have been altered at the same time, but a reference of that date to the' Steeple Pillars' suggests that there was always public access through its base. A cast-iron plaque attached to the forestair records that in 1817 the 4th Earl of Rosebery, then provost of the burgh, provided a water supply and a bleaching green for its inhabitants. The cistern for one of the wells was placed beneath the forestair, which was evidently rebuilt at this time. The channelled quoins of the steeple begin at the level of the terrace, suggesting that the street-level was also lowered at this time.

The steeple houses a bell 0.54m in diameter, inscribed: EXDONO HENRJCJ CVNJNGHAME DE BOQUHAN 1723. In 1927 it also contained another bell, 0.37m in diameter and bearing the incised inscription: THE SEAMEN OF QVEENSFERRIE DID GIFT THIS BELL TO THE TOWNE ANNO 1694 ADRIAEN DOP FECIT. This bell was removed from Bailie John Syme's house in 1750 to be hung in the tolbooth, but it is now in the tower of the nearby Episcopal church.

HISTORY

A tolbooth was in existence at South Queensferry by 1635, and in 1649 its repair was the subject of an application to the Convention of Royal Burghs.A new door 'at the foot of the tolbooth stair', to give access from the street to the 'thieves' hole', was added in 1703,9 but its exact position cannot be determined.

Substantial rebuilding took place in 1720 when the present steeple was erected. Its construction was financed by Henry Cunningham of Boquhan, MP for Stirling Burghs, who also provided a new clock and bell, and in 1732 the' floors of the steeple were strengthened to support the weight of the clock. Further repairs were carried out in 1740 to prevent the building 'going entirely to ruin'. In 1770 the first floor of the main block was fitted out as a new court-room and council-chamber, divided by a wall which in 1784 was replaced by a moveable partition.

In 1893 the 5th Earl of Rosebery gifted the adjacent hall, set at a slight angle to the E of the main block, as a memorial to his wife Hannah (d. 1890). It was designed in an Arts and Crafts style by the Edinburgh architects Sydney Mitchell and Wilson, to provide rooms for reading, games and smoking in addition to a small auditorium.

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