Arbroath, 88 High Street, Town House

The Town Buildings of 1808, now occupied by the Sheriff Court, are situated on the W side of High Street, backing on to the Market Place. They stand directly opposite the site of the late 17th-century tolbooth, which survived until 1864 but ceased to be used for civic purposes in 1780. In that year a plain three-storeyed building designed by Andrew Smith, wright, was erected almost immediately N of the site of the 1808 town-house, for use both by the burgh and by the guildry, a body which had been incorporated in 1725. This building, which was rebuilt by the guildry after a fire in 1880, was vacated by the town council in favour of the new town-house begun in 1808 to designs by David Logan, a Montrose architect.

Like its predecessors, the new building included prison accommodation until about 1842, when a new prison was built on a separate site. Following the removal of the cells, internal alterations were carried out in 1844 to plans by David Smith, a Dundee architect, but a public outcry forced the council to abandon a proposal to lease out the ground floor for shops. At that time a single-bay wing was built over the alley separating the town-house from the guildry building, which had been linked by an arched bridge in 1820.

The building is a three-storeyed block, 15m square, with a hipped and slated roof. Its three-bay main (E) front is little altered except for the installation of the consoled central doorcase in 1844. The ground storey is rusticated, and its windows are recessed between the advanced centrepiece and angle-piers carrying the paired pilasters of the upper storeys. At first-floor level the centrepiece has a large tripartite window in a round-headed recess, between pairs of Tuscan columns which support a fluted frieze and a high entablature containing a clock-face draped with swags. The side-bays have rectangular windows with balustraded aprons, and above there are horizontal blind panels, while the corresponding sections of the parapet are also balustraded.

The alley between the town buildings and the rebuilt guildry building is spanned by a shallow segmental arch supporting the plain two-storeyed addition of 1844. The rear elevation to Market Place was much altered in 1844 after the building ceased to be used as a prison, and there are several tripartite windows which are probably of that date.

Originally most of the rooms at the rear of the building were given up to prison use, with criminal cells on the ground floor and debtors' rooms on the second floor, but it also housed the council offices and a large first-floor hall whose roof rises through the next storey. The ground-floor space N of the central corridor was fitted up in 1844 as a court-room, but it was converted into two offices about 1900. The timber staircase has been rebuilt, but occupies its original central position at the rear of the building.

The hall, which was used for assemblies as well as courts, ballots and public meetings, retains a small balcony above the main door from the stair-landing, in the position of the 'orchestra' or 'fiddlers ' gallery' which was an original feature. It has panelled door-and window-architraves, dado, doors and shutters, with two chirnneypieces of dark grey marble in the end-walls, and a coombed and decorated ceiling. The SW room on the first floor was used as a retiring room during assemblies, and also as the council-chamber, but retains no early features except for a moulded cornice. One of the rooms added in 1844 above the alley to the N, which have stonevaulted floors and roofs, was used as a store for the burgh records.

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