Anstruther Town Hall is a municipal building in School Green,

Anstruther Easter Anstruther ( sco, Ainster or Enster ; gd, Ànsruthair) is a small coastal resort town in Fife, Scotland, situated on the north-shore of the Firth of Forth and south-southeast of St Andrews. The town comprises two settlements, Anstruther Eas ...

Fife Fife (, ; gd, Fìobha, ; sco, Fife) is a council area, historic county, registration county and lieutenancy area of Scotland. It is situated between the Firth of Tay and the Firth of Forth, with inland boundaries with Perth and Kinross (i ...

, Scotland. The structure, which is used as a community events venue, is a Category B

listed building In the United Kingdom, a listed building or listed structure is one that has been placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Historic Environment Scotland in Scotland, in Wales, and the Northern Irel ...

History

In the 1860s, the parish leaders in Anstruther Easter decided to commission a town hall for the parish. The site they selected was on the south side of School Green opposite the parish church. The foundation stone for the new building was laid on 11 August 1871. It was designed by John Harris of

St Andrews St Andrews ( la, S. Andrea(s); sco, Saunt Aundraes; gd, Cill Rìmhinn) is a town on the east coast of Fife in Scotland, southeast of Dundee and northeast of Edinburgh. St Andrews had a recorded population of 16,800 , making it Fife's fou ...

in the

Scottish baronial style Scottish baronial or Scots baronial is an architectural style of 19th century Gothic Revival which revived the forms and ornaments of historical architecture of Scotland in the Late Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period. Reminiscent of Scot ...

, built in

snecked masonry Snecked masonry has a mixture of roughly squared stones of different sizes. It is laid in horizontal courses with rising stones projecting through the courses of smaller stones. Yet smaller fillers called snecks also occur in the courses. The mixt ...

at a cost of £2,400 and was officially opened on 16 September 1872. The design involved a symmetrical main frontage with three bays facing onto School Green. There was short flight of steps leading up to a first-floor doorway, with a rectangular

fanlight A fanlight is a form of lunette window, often semicircular or semi-elliptical in shape, with glazing bars or tracery sets radiating out like an open fan. It is placed over another window or a doorway, and is sometimes hinged to a transom. Th ...

, which was flanked by

Doric order The Doric order was one of the three orders of ancient Greek and later Roman architecture; the other two canonical orders were the Ionic and the Corinthian. The Doric is most easily recognized by the simple circular capitals at the top of col ...

pilasters supporting an

entablature An entablature (; nativization of Italian , from "in" and "table") is the superstructure of moldings and bands which lies horizontally above columns, resting on their capitals. Entablatures are major elements of classical architecture, and ...

and a panel containing a carving of an

anchor An anchor is a device, normally made of metal , used to secure a vessel to the bed of a body of water to prevent the craft from drifting due to wind or current. The word derives from Latin ''ancora'', which itself comes from the Greek ἄγ ...

. There was a

stepped gable A stepped gable, crow-stepped gable, or corbie step is a stairstep type of design at the top of the triangular gable-end of a building. The top of the parapet wall projects above the roofline and the top of the brick or stone wall is stacked in a ...

above containing bi-partite

mullion A mullion is a vertical element that forms a division between units of a window or screen, or is used decoratively. It is also often used as a division between double doors. When dividing adjacent window units its primary purpose is a rigid supp ...

ed windows at attic level. The outer bays also contained bi-partite mullioned windows. The Kirk Wynd frontage was fenestrated with bi-partite mullioned windows on the ground floor and tri-partite mullioned windows on the first floor, and there were

bartizan A bartizan (an alteration of ''bratticing''), also called a guerite, ''garita'', or ''échauguette'', or spelled bartisan, is an overhanging, wall-mounted turret projecting from the walls of late medieval and early-modern fortifications from the ...

s at the corners. The building stretched back to Cunzie Street, but as that frontage was situated in a less elevated position, it consisted of three floors; the style was similar to the School Green frontage and again featured a doorway with a rectangular fanlight. There was a

sash window A sash window or hung sash window is made of one or more movable panels, or "sashes". The individual sashes are traditionally paned window (architecture), paned windows, but can now contain an individual sheet (or sheets, in the case of double gla ...

on the first floor and a stepped gable above containing bi-partite mullioned windows at attic level. The outer bays contained bi-partite mullion windows on the ground floor and sash windows on the first floor. Internally, the principal rooms were the main assembly hall and the burgh chambers. Following significant population growth, largely associated with the fishing industry, the

Kilrenny, Anstruther Easter and Anstruther Wester Kilrenny, Anstruther Easter and Anstruther Wester was a royal and small burgh in Fife, Scotland from 1930 to 1975. The burgh was formed by the amalgamation of three neighbouring royal burghs of Kilrenny, Anstruther Easter and Anstruther Wester ...

area became a

small burgh Small burghs were units of local government in Scotland created by the Local Government (Scotland) Act 1929 in 1930. The Act reclassified existing burghs into two classes, large and small burghs. While large burghs became largely independent of th ...

with the town hall as its meeting place in 1930. The town hall continued to serve as the meeting place of the burgh council for much of the 20th century but ceased to be the local seat of government when the enlarged North-East Fife District Council was formed in 1975. The burgh chambers then became the meeting place of Anstruther Community Council. In 2006, the building was acquired by a local charity, the East Neuk Centre Trust. The trust commissioned an extensive programme of refurbishment works which were completed in September 2006. The main assembly hall then became a community events venue and also saw use as a location for weddings and civil partnership ceremonies. Works of art in the town hall include two paintings by the locally-born artist,

Robert Fowler Robert Fowler may refer to: * Robert Fowler (archbishop of Dublin) (1724–1801), bishop in the Church of Ireland * Robert Fowler (artist) (1853–1926), English artist * Robert Fowler (athlete) (1882–1957), American marathoner * Robert Fowler (A ...

, one of

Windsor Castle Windsor Castle is a royal residence at Windsor in the English county of Berkshire. It is strongly associated with the English and succeeding British royal family, and embodies almost a millennium of architectural history. The original cast ...

, and one depicting Thomas Black, a local surgeon who drowned in the mud in Anstruther harbour. Other items preserved in the town hall include an ancient

yett A yett (from the Old English and Scots language word for "gate") is a gate or grille of latticed wrought iron bars used for defensive purposes in castles and tower houses. Unlike a portcullis, which is raised and lowered vertically using mecha ...

i.e. gate.

References

{{reflist Government buildings completed in 1872 City chambers and town halls in Scotland Category B listed buildings in Fife Anstruther

History

See also

References