Macduff Town Hall is a municipal building in Shore Street,

Macduff, Aberdeenshire Macduff ( gd, An Dùn) is a town in the Banff and Buchan area of Aberdeenshire, Scotland. It is situated on Banff Bay and faces the town of Banff across the estuary of the River Deveron. Macduff is a former burgh and was the last place in the ...

, Scotland. The structure, which was the meeting place of Macduff 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 Macduff was an early 19th century townhouse in Shore Street. Following significant population growth, largely associated with the fishing industry, the town became a police burgh in 1853. In the 1880s, the police commissioners decided to demolish the old townhouse and erect a new building in its place. The new building was designed by John Bridgeford Pirie and Arthur Clyne 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

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 ...

stone and completed in 1885. The design involved a symmetrical main frontage with three bays facing onto Shore Street; the central bay, which slightly projected forward, featured a doorway with a

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 ...

on the ground floor, 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

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 ...

with a blind

oculus Oculus (a term from Latin ''oculus'', meaning 'eye'), may refer to the following Architecture * Oculus (architecture), a circular opening in the centre of a dome or in a wall Arts, entertainment, and media * ''Oculus'' (film), a 2013 American ...

above at attic level. The central bay was flanked at attic level by

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 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 ...

-shaped roofs and surmounted with a gable containing a carving of a knight on horseback. The outer bays featured pairs of round headed windows on the ground floor,

oriel window An oriel window is a form of bay window which protrudes from the main wall of a building but does not reach to the ground. Supported by corbels, bracket (architecture), brackets, or similar cantilevers, an oriel window is most commonly found pro ...

s on the first floor and gabled

dormer A dormer is a roofed structure, often containing a window, that projects vertically beyond the plane of a pitched roof. A dormer window (also called ''dormer'') is a form of roof window. Dormers are commonly used to increase the usable space ...

windows at attic level. The carving of a knight on horseback was a reproduction of an image which had been carved on the local market cross when it was erected in 1783. Internally, the principal rooms were the council chamber and the main assembly hall. The town was advanced to the status of small burgh with the town hall as its headquarters in 1930. 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 Banff and Buchan District Council was formed in 1975. The town hall continued to function as an events venue and performers on tour in the 1990s included the

celtic music Celtic music is a broad grouping of music genres that evolved out of the folk music traditions of the Celtic people of Northwestern Europe. It refers to both orally-transmitted traditional music and recorded music and the styles vary considerab ...

band

The Boys of the Lough The Boys of the Lough is a Scottish-Irish Celtic music band active since the 1970s. Early years Their first album, called ''Boys of the Lough'' (1972) consisted of Aly Bain (fiddle), Cathal McConnell (flute), Dick Gaughan (vocals and guitar) and ...

. The town hall has also seen important political events: on 6 May 1999, in the first elections to the Scottish Parliament,

Alex Salmond Alexander Elliot Anderson Salmond (; born 31 December 1954) is a Scottish politician and economist who served as First Minister of Scotland from 2007 to 2014. A prominent figure on the Scottish nationalist movement, he has served as leader ...

spent much of the night at the town hall with his wife, Moira, before being elected

Member of the Scottish Parliament Member of the Scottish Parliament (MSP; gd, Ball Pàrlamaid na h-Alba, BPA; sco, Memmer o the Scots Pairliament, MSP) is the title given to any one of the 129 individuals elected to serve in the Scottish Parliament. Electoral system The ad ...

for

Banff and Buchan Banff and Buchan is a committee area of the Aberdeenshire Council, Scotland. It has a population of 35,742 (2001 Census). Fishing and agriculture are important industries, together with associated processing and service activity. Banff and Buchan ...

References

{{reflist Government buildings completed in 1885 City chambers and town halls in Scotland Macduff, Aberdeenshire Category B listed buildings in Aberdeenshire

History

See also

References