Prestwick Burgh Hall, also known as Prestwick Freeman's Hall and Prestwick Freemen's Hall, is a municipal building in Kirk Street,

Prestwick Prestwick () is a town in South Ayrshire on the west coast of Ayrshire in Scotland about southwest of Glasgow. It adjoins the larger town of Ayr to the south on the Firth of Clyde coast, the centre of which is about south, and the small vi ...

, Scotland. The structure, which served as the meeting place of Prestwick Burgh Council, is a Category B

listed building In the United Kingdom, a listed building is a structure of particular architectural or historic interest deserving of special protection. Such buildings are placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Hi ...

History

The first municipal building in Prestwick was an early 18th century

tolbooth A tolbooth or town house was the main municipal building of a Scotland, 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 th ...

. The tolbooth was used as the offices and meeting place of the chancellor and the two bailies who administered the town: they were elected annually by the 36 freemen of the burgh who owned of land in and around the town. The current building was commissioned by the freemen of Prestwick for use as the local burgh school. It was designed in the

Gothic Revival style Gothic Revival (also referred to as Victorian Gothic or neo-Gothic) is an architectural movement that after a gradual build-up beginning in the second half of the 17th century became a widespread movement in the first half of the 19th century ...

, built in

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 and was completed in 1837. The design involved a symmetrical main frontage with three bays facing onto the corner of The Cross and Kirk Street; the central bay, which projected forward, featured a porch with an arched doorway and an

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 tower above. The tower was fenestrated with a

lancet window A lancet window is a tall, narrow window with a sharp pointed arch at its top. This arch may or may not be a steep lancet arch (in which the compass centres for drawing the arch fall outside the opening). It acquired the "lancet" name from its rese ...

on the first floor and featured a clock face in the stage above which was surmounted by a

spire A spire is a tall, slender, pointed structure on top of a roof of a building or tower, especially at the summit of church steeples. A spire may have a square, circular, or polygonal plan, with a roughly conical or pyramidal shape. Spire ...

. There were lancet windows in the outer bays. The ground floor was initially used as a prison and the first floor was used by the burgh school which accommodated some 60 children. By the late 19th century the burgh council had assumed most of the functions of the freemen and the building had become the burgh hall. It continued in that use until the burgh council established the municipal buildings in Links Road in the late 1930s. The former burgh hall was then acquired by Ayrshire County Council and became their local district offices. After the steeple was found to be structurally unsound, it was removed in 2011: a firm of consultants advised that it should be rebuilt using new masonry and that the original stone should be used as template. Although residents lobbied for it to be restored

South Ayrshire Council South Ayrshire Council (Scottish Gaelic: ''Comhairle Shiorrachd Àir a Deas'') is the local authority for South Ayrshire, one of the 32 council areas of Scotland. It was created in 1996, and now comprises eight wards, each with three of four dire ...

failed to attract 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 ...

, or any other charitable source, to carry out the necessary works.

References

{{reflist Government buildings completed in 1837 City chambers and town halls in Scotland Prestwick Category B listed buildings in South Ayrshire Clock towers in the United Kingdom

History

See also

References