Wigtown County Buildings, also known as Wigtown County Buildings and Town Hall, is a municipal building in The Square,

Wigtown Wigtown ( (both used locally); gd, Baile na h-Ùige) is a town and former royal burgh in Wigtownshire, of which it is the county town, within the Dumfries and Galloway region in Scotland. It lies east of Stranraer and south of Newton Stewart. ...

, Scotland. The structure primarily served as the meeting place and town hall for Wigtown Burgh Council, but was also used for some meetings of Wigtownshire County Council. It 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

The first municipal building in Wigtown was 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 completed in the 16th century. Two

covenanters Covenanters ( gd, Cùmhnantaich) were members of a 17th-century Scottish religious and political movement, who supported a Presbyterian Church of Scotland, and the primacy of its leaders in religious affairs. The name is derived from '' Covena ...

, Margaret Maclauchlan and

Margaret Wilson Margaret Anne Wilson (born 20 May 1947) is a New Zealand lawyer, academic and former Labour Party politician. She served as Attorney-General from 1999 to 2005 and Speaker of the House of Representatives from 2005 to 2008, during the Fifth ...

, were held in a cell in the tolbooth before being executed by Scottish

Episcopalians Anglicanism is a Western Christianity, Western Christian tradition that has developed from the practices, liturgy, and identity of the Church of England following the English Reformation, in the context of the Protestant Reformation in Euro ...

in 1685 by tying them to stakes on the town's mudflats and allowing them to drown with the rising tide: they are remembered as the

Wigtown Martyrs The Wigtown Martyrs or Solway Martyrs, Margaret Maclauchlan and Margaret Wilson, were Scottish Covenanters who were executed by Scottish Episcopalians on 11 May, 1685 in Wigtown, Scotland, by tying them to stakes on the town's mudflats and allow ...

. The tolbooth was replaced by a new town hall which was completed in 1756. In the early 1860s, burgh officials decided to demolish the 18th century town hall and to erect a structure more in keeping with the importance of Wigtown as the administrative centre of the county of

Wigtownshire Wigtownshire or the County of Wigtown (, ) is one of the historic counties of Scotland, covering an area in the south-west of the country. Until 1975, Wigtownshire was an administrative county used for local government. Since 1975 the area has f ...

. The new building was designed by Thomas Brown II 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 red sandstone and was completed in 1863. The design involved a symmetrical main frontage with eight bays facing onto The Square; the central section of two bays featured a doorway with a stone surround and the burgh

coat of arms A coat of arms is a heraldic visual design on an escutcheon (i.e., shield), surcoat, or tabard (the latter two being outer garments). The coat of arms on an escutcheon forms the central element of the full heraldic achievement, which in its ...

in the tympanum. The doorway was flanked by

buttress A buttress is an architectural structure built against or projecting from a wall which serves to support or reinforce the wall. Buttresses are fairly common on more ancient buildings, as a means of providing support to act against the lateral (s ...

es supporting a

balcony A balcony (from it, balcone, "scaffold") is a platform projecting from the wall of a building, supported by columns or console brackets, and enclosed with a balustrade, usually above the ground floor. Types The traditional Maltese balcony ...

with heraldic lions at the corners. The other bays on the ground floor and the bays on the first floor were fenestrated with gothic windows. On the north elevation of the building, there was a three-stage projecting tower with louvres and a clock in the third stage and a

pyramid A pyramid (from el, πυραμίς ') is a structure whose outer surfaces are triangular and converge to a single step at the top, making the shape roughly a pyramid in the geometric sense. The base of a pyramid can be trilateral, quadrilate ...

-style roof above. A coat of arms, which had been recovered from the 18th century town hall was installed above the door on the northern elevation. Internally, the principal room was the courtroom on the first floor. There was also a cell with a barrel-vaulted ceiling, which had formed part of the 18th century town hall, in the part of the building behind the tower. Following the implementation of the Local Government (Scotland) Act 1889, which established a uniform system of

county council A county council is the elected administrative body governing an area known as a county. This term has slightly different meanings in different countries. Ireland The county councils created under British rule in 1899 continue to exist in Irela ...

s in Scotland, the new Wigtownshire County Council held its first meeting in the building on 22 May 1890, when it was decided to hold the council's annual meeting each May at Wigtown, but other meetings were to be held alternately at

Stranraer Stranraer ( , in Scotland also ; gd, An t-Sròn Reamhar ), also known as The Toon, is a town in Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland. It is located in the historical parish of Inch in the historic county of Wigtownshire. It lies on the shores of ...

and

Newton Stewart Newton Stewart ( Gd: ''Baile Ùr nan Stiùbhartach'') is a former burgh town in the historical county of Wigtownshire in Dumfries and Galloway, southwest Scotland. The town is on the River Cree with most of the town to the west of the river, and ...

. The council later acquired Ashwood House on Sun Street, Stranraer to serve as its main offices, close to the Sheriff Court on Lewis Street which was the council's meeting place when it met in Stranraer. County Buildings in Wigtown continued to serve as the headquarters of Wigtown Burgh Council for much of the 20th century but ceased to be the local seat of government after the enlarged Wigtown District Council was formed at the Council Offices in Sun Street in Stranraer in 1975. However, the building served instead as the meeting place for the local community council. With financial 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 ...

, a programme of refurbishment works was carried out and completed in 2003. The works built on an initiative started in 1999 to make Wigtown the "national book town" for Scotland and involved the creation of a library named after the local author, John McNeillie, and the creation of a small local history museum: items put on display in the museum included a set of early 18th century imperial measures, typically held by local authorities to ensure tradesmen comply with the

Weights and Measures Act 1824 Weights and measures acts are acts of the British Parliament determining the regulation of weights and measures. It also refers to similar royal and parliamentary acts of the Kingdoms of England and Scotland and the medieval Welsh states. ...

. In September 2018, a memorial stone was laid outside the town hall to commemorate the life of Sergeant

Louis McGuffie Louis McGuffie VC (15 March 1893 – 4 October 1918) was a Scottish recipient of the Victoria Cross, the highest and most prestigious award for gallantry in the face of the enemy that can be awarded to British and Commonwealth forces. A soldier ...

who had been posthumously awarded the

Victoria Cross The Victoria Cross (VC) is the highest and most prestigious award of the British honours system. It is awarded for valour "in the presence of the enemy" to members of the British Armed Forces and may be awarded posthumously. It was previousl ...

for his actions at the

Fifth Battle of Ypres The Fifth Battle of Ypres, also called the Advance in Flanders and the Battle of the Peaks of Flanders (french: Bataille des Crêtes de Flandres) is an informal name used to identify a series of World War I battles in northern France and sout ...

during the

First World War World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll, one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, ...

References

{{reflist Government buildings completed in 1863 City chambers and town halls in Scotland Wigtown Category B listed buildings in Dumfries and Galloway

History

See also

References