Saltcoats, Countess Street, Town House

The town-house, which was built in 1825-6, is situated on the W side of Countess Street, and is distinguished by an elaborate steeple at the centre of the main (E) front. Adjoining it to the S, and communicating with it at first-floor level, there I B is the town hall, which was built in 1891-2 on the site of the parish school. The building is constructed of sandstone ashlar from Ardrossan quarry.

The two-storeyed main block is three bays in width and about 10m square on plan. A curved projection at the rear encloses an oval spiral staircase. The ground storey of the steeple incorporates an arch-headed doorway framed by Tuscan pilasters and surmounted by a cornice decorated with acroteria. At the next stage, a diminutive oculus framed by swags is set below a moulded pediment at the level of the main wall-head. The third and fourth stages have blind segmental-headed windows, and the clock-stage is framed by Ionic angle-pilasters capped by urns. At the next level there is an octagonal belfry, with round-headed openings in the principal faces, which carries a stone spire. This was reduced in height in the 20th century, but originally had conical finials at the bases of the oblique facets, and a miniature balustraded parapet at mid-height.

When erected, the town-house was intended 'to contain certain shops below, and a large room with two retiring rooms above, alongst with a place of confinement for disorderly persons and a steeple to contain a bell and clock'. Internally it has been much altered, but the main first-floor room, which was used as a reading-room and a court-room for the local justices, retains two original chimneypieces in the N wall. In the steeple at this level there is a cell, lit by the oculus in the main front, which retains a stone bench built against the N wall.

An uninscribed bell, 0.71m in diameter, was installed in 1829 and removed to the High Kirk at Stevenston in 1988. The clock-mechanism was removed at the same time to North Ayrshire Museum.

HISTORY

Saltcoats was erected into a burgh of barony in 1576, and had an early tolbooth in Girnal Close, which contained a vaulted prison. The town's burghal status appears to have lapsed, and the tolbooth was in disuse by 1714. The present building was erected by a group of inhabitants, who 'felt great inconvenience for the want of a PubIic Clock, and a temporary place of confinement for disorderly persons, and considering that few towns of its size are destitute of some ornamental spire, resolved to erect this building by subscription, according to a plan furnished by Peter King, Mason'. The subscription was opened in 1823 and the foundation-stone was laid two years later.

The cost exceeded the sum subscribed, and the debt was extinguished only after further appeals in 1856 and 1868. Saltcoats became a police burgh in 1885, but the building remained the property of the Town-house Society until 1891, when the adjacent town hall was begun to designs by the Glasgow architects, Howie and Walton.

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