Publication Account

Date 2009

Event ID 1019838

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Publication Account

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1019838

In 1706, for example, David Ross of Balnagown, as provost, led the campaign to build a new tolbooth to replace the old, damaged structure, and helped to persuade the Convention of Royal Burghs to raise 500 merks toward the cost. The project was assigned to (and perhaps designed by) the mason Alexander Stronach who, when the money dried up, moved to work on other projects such as repairs to Dornoch Castle, with the result that the tolbooth was not completed until 1733, when the shortfall was underwritten by the then provost, General Ross of Balnagown. What remains of that building today is a tower whose turrets recall those of the tolbooths of Canongate and Musselburgh of a century and a half earlier (fig 7).

Information from ‘The Scottish Burgh Survey, Historic Tain: Archaeology and Development’, (2009).