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 in Midlothian), north of Galashiels. In the 2011 Census the population was 718. It is served by Stow railway station. The name The name St ...

Scottish Borders The Scottish Borders is one of 32 council areas of Scotland. It is bordered by West Lothian, Edinburgh, Midlothian, and East Lothian to the north, the North Sea to the east, Dumfries and Galloway to the south-west, South Lanarkshire to the we ...

, 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, 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 Public Limited Company () is a major retail banking, retail and commercial bank in Scotland. It is one of the retail banking subsidiaries of NatWest Group, together with NatWest and Ulster Bank. The Royal Bank of Sco ...

, Gilbert Innes. 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 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

rubble masonry Rubble masonry or 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. Some medieval cathedral walls have outer shells of ashlar wi ...

with

ashlar Ashlar () is a cut and dressed rock (geology), stone, worked using a chisel to achieve a specific form, typically rectangular in shape. The term can also refer to a structure built from such stones. Ashlar is the finest stone masonry unit, a ...

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 last two being outer garments), originating in Europe. The coat of arms on an escutcheon f ...

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

machicolated In architecture, a machicolation () is an opening between the supporting corbels of a battlement through which defenders could target attackers who had reached the base of the defensive wall. A smaller related structure that only protects key poi ...

parapet A parapet is a barrier that is an upward extension of a 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/brea ...

, 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 during th ...

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 common heraldic charge in the (stylized) shape of a lily (in French, and mean and respectively). Most notably, the ''fleur-de-lis'' ...

finial A finial () 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 dome, spire, tower, roo ...

. 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 keyed into and projecting from a wall to carry a wikt:superincumbent, bearing weight, a type of bracket (architecture), bracket. A corbel is a solid piece of material in t ...

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 windows, but can now contain an individual sheet (or sheets, in the case of double glazing) of glass. History ...

s on both floors and a

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 ...

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 turret projecting from the walls of late-medieval and early-modern fortifications from the early 14th c ...

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 () 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, which alternates two types of edges. A truncated octagon, t is a ...

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 ...

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