Stow of Wedale Town Hall is a municipal building in Earlston Road,

Stow of Wedale Stow of Wedale, or more often Stow, is a village in the Scottish Borders area of Scotland (historically Midlothian), north of Galashiels. In the 2011 Census the population was 718. It is served by Stow railway station. The name The name Stow is ...

Scottish Borders The Scottish Borders ( sco, the Mairches, 'the Marches'; gd, Crìochan na h-Alba) is one of 32 council areas of Scotland. It borders the City of Edinburgh, Dumfries and Galloway, East Lothian, Midlothian, South Lanarkshire, West Lothi ...

, Scotland. The structure, which serves as a community events venue, is a Category B listed building.

History

The building was commissioned by Captain Alexander Mitchell-Innes (1811–1886), who, in 1839, had inherited a large country estate, which had originally been amassed by a former Deputy Governor of the

Royal Bank of Scotland The Royal Bank of Scotland plc (RBS; gd, Banca Rìoghail na h-Alba) is a major retail and commercial bank in Scotland. It is one of the retail banking subsidiaries of NatWest Group, together with NatWest (in England and Wales) and Ulster Bank ...

, Gilbert Innes (1751–1832). Mitchell-Innes had plans to develop Stow into a holiday destination for people living in Edinburgh. The foundation stone for the new building was laid with full masonic rites, with Mitchell-Innes presiding as acting grand master, on 21 February 1854. It was designed in the Scottish baronial style, built 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 ...

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 ...

stone dressings and was completed in 1857. The design involved an asymmetrical main frontage of five bays facing Earlston Road. The central section of three bays formed an arcade with three openings on the ground floor, a carved panel depicting the

coat of arms A coat of arms is a heraldry, heraldic communication design, visual design on an escutcheon (heraldry), escutcheon (i.e., shield), surcoat, or tabard (the latter two being outer garments). The coat of arms on an escutcheon forms the central ele ...

of Alexander Mitchell-Innes above the central opening, and three square-shaped windows on the first floor. Above the windows, there was a

machicolated A machicolation (french: mâchicoulis) is a floor opening between the supporting corbels of a battlement, through which stones or other material, such as boiling water, hot sand, Calcium oxide#Weapon, quicklime or boiling cooking oil, could be dro ...

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 ...

, three water spouts shaped to resemble

cannon A cannon is a large- caliber gun classified as a type of artillery, which usually launches a projectile using explosive chemical propellant. Gunpowder ("black powder") was the primary propellant before the invention of smokeless powder ...

s, a central gablet and a

fleur-de-lis The fleur-de-lis, also spelled fleur-de-lys (plural ''fleurs-de-lis'' or ''fleurs-de-lys''), is a lily (in French, and mean 'flower' and 'lily' respectively) that is used as a decorative design or symbol. The fleur-de-lis has been used in the ...

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 ...

. The left hand bay was curved on the ground floor and

corbel In architecture, a corbel is a structural piece of stone, wood or metal jutting from a wall to carry a superincumbent weight, a type of bracket. A corbel is a solid piece of material in the wall, whereas a console is a piece applied to the s ...

ed on the first floor with

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 ...

s on both floors and a stepped gable above. The right-hand bay was fenestrated with sash windows on both floors with a stepped gable above: it was flanked 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 on both sides although the left-hand bartizan was corbelled out at a lower level than the right-hand one and was

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 rather than circular in its upper stage. Internally, the principal rooms were the reading room on the left-hand side on the ground floor and the main assembly hall on the first floor. Mitchell-Innes continued to develop the town and commissioned the Church of St Mary of Wedale in 1876. However, following the collapse of the

City of Glasgow Bank The City of Glasgow Bank was a bank in Scotland that was largely known for its spectacular collapse in October 1878, which ruined all but 254 of its 1,200 shareholders since their liability was unlimited. History The bank was founded in 1839 wi ...

in 1878, most of the proposed housing was never built. The town hall continued to serve as a community events venue throughout the 20th century and into the 21st century. The reading room was adapted to form a local history museum and archive, managed by the Gala Water History and Heritage Association, in 2005.

References

{{reflist Government buildings completed in 1857 City chambers and town halls in Scotland Category B listed buildings in the Scottish Borders

History

See also

References