Dunoon Burgh Hall is a municipal building in

Argyll Street Argyll Street is a street in the Soho district of Central London. It links Great Marlborough Street to the south to Oxford Street in the north and is connected to Regent Street to the west by Little Argyll Street. Historically it was sometimes w ...

Dunoon Dunoon (; ) is the main town on the Cowal peninsula in Argyll and Bute, Scotland. It is located on the western shore of the upper Firth of Clyde, to the south of the Holy Loch and to the north of Innellan. As well as forming part of the cou ...

, Scotland. The structure, which is used as an events venue, is Category B listed.

History

Following significant population growth, largely associated with the fishing industry, the area became a police burgh in 1868. In this context, the new police commissioners decided to procure a burgh hall: the site they selected was a piece of open land known as Gallowhill, which was part of land donated to the burgh by the local

laird Laird () is a Scottish word for minor lord (or landlord) and is a designation that applies to an owner of a large, long-established Scotland, Scottish estate. In the traditional Scottish order of precedence, a laird ranked below a Baronage of ...

, James MacArthur Moir. The foundation stone for the new building was laid with full

masonic Freemasonry (sometimes spelled Free-Masonry) consists of fraternal groups that trace their origins to the medieval guilds of stonemasons. Freemasonry is the oldest secular fraternity in the world and among the oldest still-existing organizati ...

honours on 30 August 1873. It was designed by

Robert Alexander Bryden Robert Alexander Bryden (7 July 1841 – 14 April 1906) was a Scottish architect, prominent in the second half of the 19th century. He was mainly active in the west of Scotland, where he designed schools, churches and municipal buildings. Early ...

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

schist Schist ( ) is a medium-grained metamorphic rock generally derived from fine-grained sedimentary rock, like shale. It shows pronounced ''schistosity'' (named for the rock). This means that the rock is composed of mineral grains easily seen with a l ...

stone at a cost of £4,000, and was officially opened on 25 June 1874. (Bryden also designed the adjacent and now-demolished St Cuthbert's Church around the same time.) The design involved an asymmetrical main frontage with six bays facing onto

; the left-hand section, which accommodated the main offices, featured, in the right-hand bay, an arched doorway on the ground floor and a bi-partite window on the first floor. The other bays in the left-hand section were fenestrated with bi-partite windows on the ground floor and single windows on the first floor. The right-hand section, which projected forward and accommodated the main hall, featured, in the centre bay, two segmental windows on the ground floor, two tall square-headed windows on the first floor and a stepped gable containing a

rose window Rose window is often used as a generic term applied to a circular window, but is especially used for those found in Gothic cathedrals and churches. The windows are divided into segments by stone mullions and tracery. The term ''rose window'' wa ...

on the second floor. The left-hand bay in this section featured twin arched windows on the ground floor with a

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 ...

above, while the right-hand bay was fenestrated with a single window on the ground floor. The stained glass in the rose window, which depicted a

viking Vikings were seafaring people originally from Scandinavia (present-day Denmark, Norway, and Sweden), who from the late 8th to the late 11th centuries raided, pirated, traded, and settled throughout parts of Europe.Roesdahl, pp. 9� ...

, was designed and manufactured by Ballantine and Allan. Internally, the principal room was the main assembly hall which was designed to accommodate 700 people. ''Pollock's Dictionary of the Clyde'', published in 1888, described the building as "one of the principal edifices in the town most worthy of notice". The building was altered in 1896 to create extra capacity; the changes included the creation of a seating gallery in the main hall, the transfer of the main entrance from Hanover Street to Argyll Street and an enlarged caretakers' flat. During the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

, the burgh hall was used as a centre to administer the allocation of homes for 1,000 evacuee children from

Glasgow Glasgow is the Cities of Scotland, most populous city in Scotland, located on the banks of the River Clyde in Strathclyde, west central Scotland. It is the List of cities in the United Kingdom, third-most-populous city in the United Kingdom ...

. The burgh council closed the upper floors of the burgh hall after deciding to promote the Queen's Hall, which was rebuilt in 1959, as the main events venue in the town. The burgh hall ceased to be the local seat of government when the enlarged Argyll District Council was formed in 1975. The upper floors of the building remained empty, and its condition deteriorated: the building was sold to Dunoon and Cowal Housing Association in 1993 and then to Fyne Homes in 2001. Fyne Homes presented proposals for the redevelopment of the building at a public meeting at Dunoon Grammar School in 2002 but, following local objections, the scheme did not proceed and the condition of the building continued to deteriorate. The John McAslan Family Trust acquired the hall from Fyne Homes for a nominal sum in 2008. The trust initiated an extensive programme of refurbishment works to convert the building into an arts and culture hub. The works, which were carried out to a design by Page\Park Architects, cost £3.5 million. The sources of funding included

Creative Scotland Creative Scotland ( ; ) is the development body for the arts and creative industries in Scotland. Based in Edinburgh, it is an executive non-departmental public body of the Scottish Government The Scottish Government (, ) is the execut ...

, 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 ...

Highlands and Islands Enterprise Highlands and Islands Enterprise (HIE; ) is the development agency for the Highlands and Islands of Scotland, an executive non-departmental public body of the Scottish Government with the role to "help build a prosperous, sustainable and inclu ...

and

Historic Environment Scotland Historic Environment Scotland (HES) () is an executive non-departmental public body responsible for investigating, caring for and promoting Scotland's historic environment. HES was formed in 2015 from the merger of government agency Historic Sc ...

. Following completion of the works, the building was reopened by the

First Minister of Scotland The first minister of Scotland () is the head of government of Scotland. The first minister leads the Scottish Government, the Executive (government), executive branch of the devolved government and is th ...

Nicola Sturgeon Nicola Ferguson Sturgeon (born 19 July 1970) is a Scottish politician who served as First Minister of Scotland and Leader of the Scottish National Party (SNP) from 2014 to 2023. She has served as a member of the Scottish Parliament (MSP) sin ...

, in June 2017.

Architectural detail

A stone carving on the building's Hanover Street elevation features the initials of Robert Leslie Smith,

provost Provost may refer to: Officials Ecclesiastic * Provost (religion), a high-ranking church official * Prince-provost, a high-ranking church official Government * Provost (civil), an officer of local government, including the equivalent ...

of Dunoon.''Oliver & Boyd's New Edinburgh Almanac and National Repository'' –

Oliver & Boyd Oliver and Boyd was a British publishing and printing firm that traded from 1807 or 1808 until 1990.

(1884), p. 212

Notes

References

External links

*{{commonscat-inline Government buildings completed in 1874 1874 establishments in Scotland City chambers and town halls in Scotland Burgh Hall Category B listed buildings in Argyll and Bute Listed government buildings in Scotland Scottish baronial architecture

History

Architectural detail

See also

Notes

References

External links