Kirkcudbright Town Hall is a municipal building in St Mary's Street,

Kirkcudbright Kirkcudbright ( ; sco, Kirkcoubrie; gd, Cille Chùithbeirt) is a town, parish and a Royal Burgh from 1455 in Kirkcudbrightshire, of which it is traditionally the county town, within Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland. The town lies southwest of C ...

, Scotland. The building, which was the headquarters of Kirkcudbright Burgh Council, 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 first municipal building in the town was the

Kirkcudbright Tolbooth Kirkcudbright Tolbooth is a historic municipal building in Kirkcudbright in Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland. Built between 1627 and 1629 to serve the town as a centre of commercial administration, a meeting place for the council, and a prison, i ...

which was completed in 1629. Like other tolbooths, Kirkcudbright Tolbooth had been primarily designed as a prison and, in 1859, the town clerk, William McLellan, and other burgh leaders started a campaign for new public rooms: the site they selected was open land on the east side of St Mary's Street. The new public rooms were erected in 1863 at a cost of £1,900 but within a few years the foundations were found to be unsafe and it became necessary to replace the building with a new structure. The foundation stone for the new building was laid by the

Lord Lieutenant of Kirkcudbright Lord is an appellation for a person or deity who has authority, control, or power over others, acting as a master, chief, or ruler. The appellation can also denote certain persons who hold a title of the peerage in the United Kingdom, or are ...

, the Earl of Selkirk, on 7 August 1878. It was designed by Peddie and Kinnear in the

neoclassical style Neoclassical architecture is an architectural style produced by the Neoclassicism, Neoclassical movement that began in the mid-18th century in Italy and France. It became one of the most prominent architectural styles in the Western world. The pr ...

, built in red

sandstone Sandstone is a clastic sedimentary rock composed mainly of sand-sized (0.0625 to 2 mm) silicate grains. Sandstones comprise about 20–25% of all sedimentary rocks. Most sandstone is composed of quartz or feldspar (both silicates) ...

and was completed in 1881. The design involved a symmetrical main frontage with three bays facing onto St Mary's Street; the central bay featured a doorway on the ground floor 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 and

brackets A bracket is either of two tall fore- or back-facing punctuation marks commonly used to isolate a segment of text or data from its surroundings. Typically deployed in symmetric pairs, an individual bracket may be identified as a 'left' or 'r ...

supporting a

balustrade A baluster is an upright support, often a vertical moulded shaft, square, or lathe-turned form found in stairways, parapets, and other architectural features. In furniture construction it is known as a spindle. Common materials used in its con ...

d stone

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 ...

. There was a

Venetian window A Venetian window (also known as a Serlian window) is a large tripartite window which is a key element in Palladian architecture. Although Sebastiano Serlio (1475–1554) did not invent it, the window features largely in the work of the Italian a ...

on the first floor; the outer bays were fenestrated by square headed windows on the ground floor and by round headed windows on the first floor. The windows on the first floor were flanked by pairs of

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 and, at roof level, there was 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 ...

inscribed with the words "Library", "Town Hall" and "Museum" and, above that, a

modillion A modillion is an ornate bracket, more horizontal in shape and less imposing than a corbel. They are often seen underneath a cornice which it helps to support. Modillions are more elaborate than dentils (literally translated as small teeth). All ...

cornice In architecture, a cornice (from the Italian ''cornice'' meaning "ledge") is generally any horizontal decorative moulding that crowns a building or furniture element—for example, the cornice over a door or window, around the top edge of a ...

. Internally, the principal rooms were the council chamber, the reading room and the library on the ground floor, and the main assembly hall on the first floor. The Stewartry Museum was established on the first floor of the town hall when it opened, but after the town hall became inadequate for the increasing size of the collection, the museum relocated to its current location further south along St Mary's Street in 1893. The Kirkcudbright Library and Scientific Institute, later simply known as Kirkcudbright Library, which was also established on the first floor of the town hall when it opened, remained there until the 1950s and then relocated to the Sherriff Court. The building continued to serve as the headquarters of the burgh council for much of the 20th century, but ceased to be the local seat of government when the enlarged Stewartry District Council was formed at the council offices in the High Street in 1975. An extensive programme of works costing £3.1 million to convert the town hall into an art gallery under the name "Kirkcudbright Galleries" was completed in June 2018. While some rooms were identified for temporary exhibitions, the management also designated a room for a permanent display of works by local artists, known as the "Kirkcudbright Artists' Collection". The new gallery was officially opened by the

Princess Royal Princess Royal is a substantive title, style customarily (but not automatically) awarded by a United Kingdom, British monarch to their eldest daughter. Although purely honorary, it is the highest honour that may be given to a female member of th ...

on 12 July 2018.

References

{{reflist Government buildings completed in 1881 City chambers and town halls in Scotland Kirkcudbright Category B listed buildings in Dumfries and Galloway

History

See also

References