Colinsburgh Town Hall is a municipal building in Main Street,

Colinsburgh Colinsburgh is a village in east Fife, Scotland, in the parish of Kilconquhar. History The village is named after Colin Lindsay, 3rd Earl of Balcarres (1652–1722), who gave the land on which it was built. It was here that the first meeting of ...

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 building is used as a community events venue.

History

For most of the 19th century, community events in Colinsburgh were held in the local school, but, in the early 1880s, the artist, Lady Caroline Coutts Lindsay, led an initiative to establish a dedicated town hall. The initiative gathered pace when Captain James Scott-Davidson of Cairnie took charge of fundraising and secured a significant contribution from Eudoxie, Countess of Lindsay, who, with her husband, John Trotter Bethune, 10th Earl of Lindsay, lived at Lahill House near

Upper Largo Upper Largo or Kirkton of Largo is a village in the parish of Largo, Fife, Largo, near the East Neuk of Fife, Scotland. It rests on the southern slopes of Largo Law and half a mile north of Largo Bay and the rather larger village of Lower Largo. I ...

. The site they chose for the new town hall in Main Street was occupied by the Countess of Lindsay's sewing school. Construction on the new building started in 1894. It was designed by Andrew Dewar and Alexander Cumming Dewar of the

Edinburgh Edinburgh ( ; gd, Dùn Èideann ) is the capital city of Scotland and one of its 32 Council areas of Scotland, council areas. Historically part of the county of Midlothian (interchangeably Edinburghshire before 1921), it is located in Lothian ...

architectural practice of A. and A. C. Dewar, built in black

basalt Basalt (; ) is an aphanite, aphanitic (fine-grained) extrusive igneous rock formed from the rapid cooling of low-viscosity lava rich in magnesium and iron (mafic lava) exposed at or very near the planetary surface, surface of a terrestrial ...

whinstone Whinstone is a term used in the quarrying industry to describe any hard dark-coloured rock. Examples include the igneous rocks, basalt and dolerite, as well as the sedimentary rock, chert. Etymology The Northern English/Scots term ''whin'' is fi ...

with

ashlar Ashlar () is finely dressed (cut, worked) stone, either an individual stone that has been worked until squared, or a structure built from such stones. Ashlar is the finest stone masonry unit, generally rectangular cuboid, mentioned by Vitruv ...

dressings and was officially opened by

James Lindsay, 26th Earl of Crawford James Ludovic Lindsay, 26th Earl of Crawford and 9th Earl of Balcarres, Fellow of the Royal Society, FRS, Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society, FRAS, Knight of the Thistle, KT (28 July 184731 January 1913) was a British astronomer, politici ...

, whose seat was at

Balcarres House Balcarres House lies 1km north of the village of Colinsburgh, in the East Neuk of Fife, in eastern Scotland. It is centred on a mansion built in 1595 by John Lindsay (1552–1598), second son of David, 9th Earl of Crawford. The house became the ...

, on 25 October 1895. The design involved a symmetrical main frontage of thee bays facing Main Street. The central bay featured a prominent

porte-cochère A porte-cochère (; , late 17th century, literally 'coach gateway'; plural: porte-cochères, portes-cochères) is a doorway to a building or courtyard, "often very grand," through which vehicles can enter from the street or a covered porch-like ...

formed by square

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 ...

columns supporting segmental archways with

voussoir A voussoir () is a wedge-shaped element, typically a stone, which is used in building an arch or vault. Although each unit in an arch or vault is a voussoir, two units are of distinct functional importance: the keystone and the springer. The ...

s and

keystones A keystone (or capstone) is the wedge-shaped stone at the apex of a masonry arch or typically round-shaped one at the apex of a vault. In both cases it is the final piece placed during construction and locks all the stones into position, allo ...

surmounted by a

parapet A parapet is a barrier that is an extension of the wall at the edge of a roof, terrace, balcony, walkway or other structure. The word comes ultimately from the Italian ''parapetto'' (''parare'' 'to cover/defend' and ''petto'' 'chest/breast'). Whe ...

. On the first floor, there was a large

Diocletian window Diocletian windows, also called thermal windows, are large semicircular windows characteristic of the enormous public baths (''thermae'') of Ancient Rome. They have been revived on a limited basis by some classical revivalist architects in more m ...

, also with voussoirs and a keystone, flanked by

pilaster In classical architecture Classical architecture usually denotes architecture which is more or less consciously derived from the principles of Greek and Roman architecture of classical antiquity, or sometimes even more specifically, from the ...

s with

finial A finial (from '' la, finis'', end) or hip-knob is an element marking the top or end of some object, often formed to be a decorative feature. In architecture, it is a small decorative device, employed to emphasize the Apex (geometry), apex of a d ...

s and surmounted by a gable containing the inscription "Colinsburgh 1894 Town Hall". The outer bays took the form of single storey circular structures with

conical A cone is a three-dimensional geometric shape that tapers smoothly from a flat base (frequently, though not necessarily, circular) to a point called the apex or vertex. A cone is formed by a set of line segments, half-lines, or lines conn ...

roofs. Internally, the principal room was the main assembly hall which was well-lit by the Diocletian window. A central heating system was installed in the building in 1904. The building was brought under the management of the Colinsburgh Town Hall Management Committee which was formed in 1966, and then continued to serve as a community events venue for Colinsburgh through the remainder of the 20th century and into the 21st century. A programme of works to refurbish the town hall and to remodel it internally was carried out with financial support from the

National Lottery Community Fund The National Lottery Community Fund, legally named the Big Lottery Fund, is a non-departmental public body responsible for distributing funds raised by the National Lottery for "good causes". Since 2004 it has awarded over £9 billion to ...

and was completed in 2011. Then the windows were replaced, also with financial support from the National Lottery Community Fund, in 2018. In July 2000, the Falkirk Titanic Society held what it described as "Scotland's first major Titanic exhibition" in the town hall: the exhibition commemorated, among others, the life of the engineer on the

liner A low-ionization nuclear emission-line region (LINER) is a type of galactic nucleus that is defined by its spectral line emission. The spectra typically include line emission from weakly ionized or neutral atoms, such as O, O+, N+, and S+. ...

, RMS ''

Titanic RMS ''Titanic'' was a British passenger liner, operated by the White Star Line, which sank in the North Atlantic Ocean on 15 April 1912 after striking an iceberg during her maiden voyage from Southampton, England, to New York City, United ...

'', Billie Moyes, who was born in

Stirling Stirling (; sco, Stirlin; gd, Sruighlea ) is a city in central Scotland, northeast of Glasgow and north-west of Edinburgh. The market town, surrounded by rich farmland, grew up connecting the royal citadel, the medieval old town with its me ...

and who saved many lives by maintaining the power on the ship for as long as possible before it sank in the North Atlantic Ocean on 15 April 1912.

References

{{reflist Government buildings completed in 1895 City chambers and town halls in Scotland