Dingwall Town Hall is a municipal structure in the High Street,

Dingwall Dingwall ( sco, Dingwal, gd, Inbhir Pheofharain ) is a town and a royal burgh in the Highland council area of Scotland. It has a population of 5,491. It was an east-coast harbour that now lies inland. Dingwall Castle was once the biggest cast ...

Highland Highlands or uplands are areas of high elevation such as a mountainous region, elevated mountainous plateau or high hills. Generally speaking, upland (or uplands) refers to ranges of hills, typically from up to while highland (or highlands) is ...

, Scotland. The structure, which is now used as a museum, 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

The Beatles Played Here, Dingwall (geograph 4245553)

In 1729, the burgh leaders decided that the town needed a municipal building in which to hold civic functions and to incarcerate offenders: the site they selected was the residence of one of the burgesses, Alexander Dingwall, who was offered alternative accommodation elsewhere in the town. The new building was designed by a Mr Downie in the form of a

tolbooth A tolbooth or town house was the main municipal building of a Scottish burgh, from medieval times until the 19th century. The tolbooth usually provided a council meeting chamber, a court house and a jail. The tolbooth was one of three essen ...

, built by a local builder, William MacNeill, in

rubble masonry Rubble stone is rough, uneven building stone not laid in regular courses. It may fill the core of a wall which is faced with unit masonry such as brick or ashlar. Analogously, some medieval cathedral walls are outer shells of ashlar with an inn ...

and was completed in 1745. The original design involved a symmetrical main frontage with five bays facing onto the High Street; the central bay featured a flight of steps leading up to an entrance on the first floor: there was a square stone structure known as "the steeple" above. There were doorways in the flanking bays on the ground floor and regular fenestration in the outer bays on the ground floor and in both the flanking and outer bays on the first floor. Internally, the principal rooms, which were on the first floor, were council chamber was on the left and the courtroom on the right. The ground floor was used as a lock-up while the steeple accommodated a debtors' prison. In 1773, the steeple was augmented by a tall timber

octagon In geometry, an octagon (from the Greek ὀκτάγωνον ''oktágōnon'', "eight angles") is an eight-sided polygon or 8-gon. A '' regular octagon'' has Schläfli symbol and can also be constructed as a quasiregular truncated square, t, whi ...

cupola In architecture, a cupola () is a relatively small, most often dome-like, tall structure on top of a building. Often used to provide a lookout or to admit light and air, it usually crowns a larger roof or dome. The word derives, via Italian, from ...

, built by Donald McNeil to a design by John Boag: the clock for the cupola was a gift to the town from the former

member of parliament A member of parliament (MP) is the representative in parliament of the people who live in their electoral district. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, this term refers only to members of the lower house since upper house members of ...

for

Tain Burghs Tain Burghs, was a constituency of the House of Commons of the Parliament of Great Britain from 1708 to 1801 and of the Parliament of the United Kingdom from 1801 to 1832, sometimes known as Northern Burghs. It was represented by one Member of P ...

, Major-General John Scott. The building was remodelled to a design by William Cumming Joass in 1905 with the addition of

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 ...

s to the wings, which were projected forward from their original positions, and a central

portico A portico is a porch leading to the entrance of a building, or extended as a colonnade, with a roof structure over a walkway, supported by columns or enclosed by walls. This idea was widely used in ancient Greece and has influenced many cult ...

with columns 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

balcony A balcony (from it, balcone, "scaffold") is a platform projecting from the wall of a building, supported by columns or console brackets, and enclosed with a balustrade, usually above the ground floor. Types The traditional Maltese balcony is ...

. The rooms in the town hall continued to be used for public events and performers there included the

rock band A rock band or pop band is a small musical ensemble that performs rock music, pop music, or a related genre. A four-piece band is the most common configuration in rock and pop music. In the early years, the configuration was typically two guita ...

, ''

The Beatles The Beatles were an English Rock music, rock band, formed in Liverpool in 1960, that comprised John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr. They are regarded as the Cultural impact of the Beatles, most influential band of al ...

'', who gave a concert on 4 January 1963. There were only 19 attendees as most people in the town went to the see the local band, ''The Melotones'', at the Strathpeffer Pavilion that night. The rock band, ''

Slade Slade are an English rock band formed in Wolverhampton in 1966. They rose to prominence during the glam rock era in the early 1970s, achieving 17 consecutive top 20 hits and six number ones on the UK Singles Chart. The ''British Hit Singles ...

'', played a concert at the venue on 14 November 1970. The town hall was also the venue for political events: at the 1983 general election, the future

Leader of the Liberal Democrats The Liberal Democrats are a political party in the United Kingdom. Party members elect the leader of the Liberal Democrats, the head and highest-ranking member of the party. Liberal Democrat members of Parliament also elect a deputy leader of ...

Charles Kennedy Charles Peter Kennedy (25 November 1959 – 1 June 2015) was a British Liberal Democrat politician who served as Leader of the Liberal Democrats from 1999 to 2006, and was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Ross, Skye and Lochaber from 1983 ...

, was proclaimed the local member of parliament in the town hall. The building continued to serve as the headquarters of the burgh council, but ceased to be the local seat of government when the enlarged Ross and Cromarty District Council was formed in 1975. At that time, the building became the home of the Dingwall Museum: the collection includes a reconstruction of a local smithy as well as a room devoted the life of Major-General Sir Hector MacDonald who saw action at the

Battle of Omdurman The Battle of Omdurman was fought during the Anglo-Egyptian conquest of Sudan between a British–Egyptian expeditionary force commanded by British Commander-in-Chief (sirdar) major general Horatio Herbert Kitchener and a Sudanese army of the M ...

in 1898.

References

{{reflist Government buildings completed in 1745 City chambers and town halls in Scotland Category B listed buildings in Highland (council area) Dingwall Clock towers in the United Kingdom

History

See also

References