Banff Sheriff Court is a judicial structure in Low Street,

Banff, Aberdeenshire Banff ( gd, Banbh) is a town in the Banff and Buchan area of Aberdeenshire, Scotland. It is situated on Banff Bay and faces the town of Macduff across the estuary of the River Deveron. It is a former royal burgh, and is the county town of t ...

, Scotland. The structure, which was the headquarters of Banffshire County Council and was also used as a courthouse, 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 I ...

History

Originally, court hearings in Banffshire were held in a

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 esse ...

which was built on the west side of Low Street, on the corner with Strait Path, in the early 16th century. From the late 18th century, court hearings were held in the newly-built

Town House A townhouse, townhome, town house, or town home, is a type of terraced housing. A modern townhouse is often one with a small footprint on multiple floors. In a different British usage, the term originally referred to any type of city residence ...

. In the mid-19th century it became necessary to commission a dedicated courthouse: the site the sheriff selected was occupied by a private house known as "Little Fillicap", which had been the home of Katharine Innes, Lady Gight, who was periodically visited there by her grandson, George Gordon Byron, who later became

Lord Byron George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron (22 January 1788 – 19 April 1824), known simply as Lord Byron, was an English romantic poet and peer. He was one of the leading figures of the Romantic movement, and has been regarded as among the ...

. The courthouse was designed by James Matthews in the

Italianate style The Italianate style was a distinct 19th-century phase in the history of Classical architecture. Like Palladianism and Neoclassicism, the Italianate style drew its inspiration from the models and architectural vocabulary of 16th-century Italian R ...

, built by John Drysdale and Sons 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 at a cost of £7,214 and was officially opened by sheriff-substitute, James Gordon, on 28 January 1871. The design involved a symmetrical main frontage with seven bays facing onto Low Street. The central section of three bays, which was slightly projected forward, featured a three-bay single-storey

portico A portico is a porch leading to the entrance of a building, or extended as a colonnade, with a roof structure over a walkway, supported by columns or enclosed by walls. This idea was widely used in ancient Greece and has influenced many cul ...

formed by four pairs of

Corinthian order The Corinthian order ( Greek: Κορινθιακός ρυθμός, Latin: ''Ordo Corinthius'') is the last developed of the three principal classical orders of Ancient Greek architecture and Roman architecture. The other two are the Doric order ...

columns supporting an

entablature An entablature (; nativization of Italian , from "in" and "table") is the superstructure of moldings and bands which lies horizontally above columns, resting on their capitals. Entablatures are major elements of classical architecture, and ...

surmounted by a

balustrade A baluster is an upright support, often a vertical moulded shaft, square, or lathe-turned form found in stairways, parapets, and other architectural features. In furniture construction it is known as a spindle. Common materials used in its c ...

. On the first floor, the central section featured three round headed windows with keystones and

architrave In classical architecture, an architrave (; from it, architrave "chief beam", also called an epistyle; from Greek ἐπίστυλον ''epistylon'' "door frame") is the lintel or beam that rests on the capitals of columns. The term can a ...

s, while the outer bays were fenestrated with segmental headed windows on the ground floor and by round headed windows on the first floor, all with keystones and architraves. Internally, the principal room was a double-height courtroom. Following the implementation of the

Local Government (Scotland) Act 1889 The Local Government (Scotland) Act 1889 (52 & 53 Vict. c. 50) is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom which was passed on 26 August 1889. The main effect of the act was to establish elected county councils in Scotland. In this it foll ...

, which established county councils in every county, the new county leaders needed to identify offices for Banffshire County Council. A council chamber was established, for this purpose, on the first floor of the building. After the abolition of Banffshire County Council in 1975, the building reverted to being used solely for judicial purposes. The courtroom continued to be used for hearings of the sheriff's court and, on one day a month, for hearings of the justice of the peace court.

References

{{reflist Government buildings completed in 1871 County halls in Scotland Category B listed buildings in Aberdeenshire Court buildings in Scotland

History

See also

References