Kirkcudbright Tolbooth is a historic municipal building in Kirkcudbright in Kirkcudbrightshire in the administrative area of 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, it was used for all these roles until the late eighteenth century when the council moved much of its business to new, larger premises they had constructed across the street; the tolbooth remained in use as a prison until the early nineteenth century, after which it remained in council ownership and was put to a variety of uses. Amongst the people incarcerated in the tolbooth during its use as a prison were people accused of witchcraft, and as late as 1805 it was used to imprison a woman convicted of pretending to be a witch. It was also used to imprison Covenanters during the Killing Time of 1679–1688; in 1684 a crowd stormed the building, killing a guard and freeing the Covenanters held within. American naval hero John Paul Jones was held in the tolbooth in 1770, following his arrest on suspicion of homicide after a sailor under his command died following a flogging Jones had ordered. Kirkcudbright Tolbooth was designated a Category A listed building in 1971. It was renovated in the 1990s, and is currently used as a visitor centre and art gallery.
Original function
In Scottish towns from the medieval period to the nineteenth century, tolbooths were the centre of local government and law enforcement. From the twelfth century, royal burghs were allowed to hold markets and conduct international trade, and to levy tolls and customs on these commercial activities; the word tolbooth derives from the role the buildings played as the centre of that commercial administration. Their most important functions were as a place for councils and courts to convene, for ceremonial civic functions, and as prisons for debtors and criminals. They usually had bells, which were used to mark the start of the working day, of curfew, and of public events, and from the seventeenth century it was obligatory for them to house a clock; the steeple of the tolbooth's clock tower was considered a mark of civic pride, and of the authority of the council. From the seventeenth century onwards the word became increasingly synonymous with 'prison', and from the eighteenth century town councils started to erect larger and more commodious buildings, known as town houses or council houses, from which to conduct council business, while maintaining the tolhouse as a place of incarceration.
Description
Kirkcudbright Tolbooth is a large building, somewhat church-like in appearance, at the corner of Kirkcudbright's right-angled High Street. It has a long, three-storey block running roughly east-west, measuring 22.1 metres (73 ft) by 6.6 metres (22 ft), with a square tower at the east end. The main block and the lower portion of the tower, which would originally have been harled, are made of rubble with red sandstone dressings. The upper stages of the tower, which bear a nineteenth-century clockface, are of ashlar, and are surmounted by a corbeled parapet which is drained by stone spouts. There are obelisks on each of the corners of the parapet, and in the centre is a conical stone spire topped by a boat-shaped weathervane. Beneath the tower on the north face of the building is an ashlar forestair (an outside stair at the front of the building), added in the 18th century and blocking a door to the prison at the base of the tower. The town's mercat cross now stands on the landing of the forestair; it has a carved base, a 1.95-metre (6.4 ft) chamfered stone shaft, and a triangular finial carved with the date 1610 and the initials EME. At the base of the forestair is a well, with lead spouts and a bolection moulded frame with an inscription which reads:
THIS FOUNT – NOT RICHES – LIFE SUPPLIES, ART GIVES WHAT NATURE HERE DENIES; POSTERITY MUST SURELY BLESS SAINT CUTHBERT'S SONS WHO PURCHAS'D THIS.
WATER INTRODUCED 23D MARCH 1763. Attached to the wall of the tolbooth are two surviving sets of iron jougs, one at the north-west corner of the building about 1.5 metres (4.9 ft) above the level of the street, and one at the top of the forestair. Secured around the neck, these were used to restrain and publicly shame people convicted of misdemeanours. Hanging within the steeple are two bells. The principal bell, cast in the Netherlands in 1646, measures 52 centimetres (20 in) in height and 61 centimetres (24 in) in diameter, and carries the inscription "SOLI DEO GLORIA MICHAEL BVRGERHVYS ME FECIT ANNO 1646" (Glory to God alone. Michael Burgerhuys made me in the year 1646). The smaller bell in the steeple was made in London in 1841 by Thomas Mears. A third bell, known as 'the toun's litle bell', is displayed within the tolbooth. It measures 34 centimetres (13 in) in height and 44 centimetres (17 in) in diameter, and was cast in Rotterdam. It is inscribed with "QUIRIN DE VISSER ME FECIT 1724" (Quirin[ius] de Visser made me, 1724). There is also a clock, which was installed in 1897; the tower's original clock, of a single-hand design and probably made in the Netherlands prior to 1580, is on display in the nearby Stewartry Museum. The interior features of the building are mostly modern; even before its refurbishment in the 1990s, most of the internal partitions were modern, probably due to rearrangements due to frequent changes in the building's use in the 19th and 20th centuries. It is now used as an art gallery and visitor centre: most of the upper part of the building is gallery space, with a small reception area and a gift shop and café on the ground floor.
History
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