Prestwick Burgh Hall, also known as Prestwick Freeman's Hall and Prestwick Freemen's Hall, is a municipal building in Kirk Street,

Prestwick Prestwick ( gd, Preastabhaig) is a town in South Ayrshire on the west coast of Ayrshire in Scotland about southwest of Glasgow. It adjoins the larger town of Ayr to the south on the Firth of Clyde coast, the centre of which is about south, an ...

, Scotland. The structure, which served as the meeting place of Prestwick 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 Prestwick was an early 18th century

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 ...

. The tolbooth was used as the offices and meeting place of the chancellor and the two bailies who administered the town: they were elected annually by the 36 freemen of the burgh who owned of land in and around the town. The current building was commissioned by the freemen of Prestwick for use as the local burgh school. It was designed in the

Gothic Revival style Gothic Revival (also referred to as Victorian Gothic, neo-Gothic, or Gothick) is an architectural movement that began in the late 1740s in England. The movement gained momentum and expanded in the first half of the 19th century, as increasingly ...

, 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 was completed in 1837. The design involved a symmetrical main frontage with three bays facing onto the corner of The Cross and Kirk Street; the central bay, which projected forward, featured a porch with an arched doorway and an

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 ...

al tower above. The tower was fenestrated with a

lancet window A lancet window is a tall, narrow window with a pointed arch at its top. It acquired the "lancet" name from its resemblance to a lance. Instances of this architectural element are typical of Gothic church edifices of the earliest period. Lancet wi ...

on the first floor and featured a clock face in the stage above which was surmounted by a

spire A spire is a tall, slender, pointed structure on top of a roof of a building or tower, especially at the summit of church steeples. A spire may have a square, circular, or polygonal plan, with a roughly conical or pyramidal shape. Spires are ...

. There were lancet windows in the outer bays. The ground floor was initially used as a prison and the first floor was used by the burgh school which accommodated some 60 children. By the late 19th century the burgh council had assumed most of the functions of the freemen and the building had become the burgh hall. It continued in that use until the burgh council established the municipal buildings in Links Road in the late 1930s. The former burgh hall was then acquired by Ayrshire County Council and became their local district offices. After the steeple was found to be structurally unsound, it was removed in 2011: a firm of consultants advised that it should be rebuilt using new masonry and that the original stone should be used as template. Although residents lobbied for it to be restored

South Ayrshire Council South is one of the cardinal directions or compass points. The direction is the opposite of north and is perpendicular to both east and west. Etymology The word ''south'' comes from Old English ''sūþ'', from earlier Proto-Germanic ''*sunþaz ...

failed to attract support from the

Heritage Lottery Fund The National Lottery Heritage Fund, formerly the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF), distributes a share of National Lottery funding, supporting a wide range of heritage projects across the United Kingdom. History The fund's predecessor bodies were ...

, or any other charitable source, to carry out the necessary works.

References

{{reflist Government buildings completed in 1837 City chambers and town halls in Scotland Prestwick Category B listed buildings in South Ayrshire Clock towers in the United Kingdom

History

See also

References