Description

Built in 1884-6 to plans by James Campbell Walker as a 3-storey, irregular-plan, Scottish Baronial Town Hall on corner site on the high street of Hawick. It has finialled, pedimented dormers, crowstepped gables and a prominent, 4-stage, pyramidal-roofed corner tower with finialled, conical-roofed bartizans. It is built in sandstone ashlar and it has a base course; stepped string course forming 2nd-floor cills; continuous 2nd-floor hoodmoulds; stepped string course, clock faces with prominent voussoirs, louvred, pedimented dormers, and louvred vents halfway up roof to each side of upper stage of tower. Weathervane to roof of tower.

(See Statement of Special Interest for legal exclusions.)

Principal (High Street) Elevation: A 4-bay elevation with the tower to the right. It has a recessed door in a round-arched architrave to the left bay and similar arched section over the window on the right. The first floor has a slightly projecting tripartite central window at 1st floor with crest above, flanked by bipartite windows with shallow, corbelled, balustraded balconies and a canted window on the tower to the right.

Side (Cross Wynd) Elevation: Roughly 8 bays on steeply sloping site, with facade stepping out and up towards rear (east). Pedimented wallhead dormer to 2nd bay from left; 1st-floor bartizan in re-entrant angle between 2nd and 3rd bays; gabletted dormer with overhanging eaves to 3rd bay; 4 storeys to gabled 5th bay; 4-storey, conical-roofed, circular tower to 7th bay. Irregularly fenestrated to ridge-roofed section to outer right, with crenullated parapet to left and lower single storey section to the far right.

Plate glass and multi-pane glazing in timber sash and case windows. Grey slate roof with metal ridges; fish scale slates to bartizans.

INTERIOR: Glazed ceramic wall tiling to entrance lobby. Central stone stair with elaborate foliate-patterned, wrought-iron balustrade and polished timber handrail. Various secondary stone stairs, some with simple metal balustrades and timber handrails. Council Chamber with highly ornate timber chimneypiece bearing Hawick coat of arms, matching furniture and timber-beamed ceiling. Former Police Court with panelled detailing to central, ridge-roofed skylight. Galleried principal function room with slender cast-iron columns. 6-panel timber doors and half-glazed, timber-panelled doors with stained glass in principal public areas; 4-panel timber doors in office areas. Some tongue-and-groove panelling to dado height.

Statement of Interest

An outstanding late-19th-century Scottish Baronial town hall, situated on a prominent corner site at the centre of Hawick's High Street and with a tower that has a commanding presence over the whole town.

James Campbell Walker (1821-88) was an Edinburgh architect who trained in the office of the highly prominent architect William Burn (1789-70) and his successor David Bryce (1803-76), setting up practice on his own account in 1856/7. He won the commission for Hawick Town Hall in a competition of 1883, and his plans were executed by builders John & William Marshall at a cost of £16,000. Like Dunfermline Town Hall - a commission Campbell had secured in a competition of 1875 - Hawick Town Hall is in a Franco-Scottish style which is strongly reminiscent of Bryce's work.

The principal function room has a false ceiling concealing the original plasterwork of the basket-arched roof, which is still visible from the stage. The building originally housed a police station as well as municipal offices; the cells remain along a corridor towards the rear. The lesser function hall was added at the rear in the 1950s or 1960s.

In accordance with Section 1 (4A) of the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) (Scotland) Act 1997 the following are legally excluded from the listing: the mid-20^th century two storey, six bay section fronting High Street, the adjacent and internally connected ground floor level below 44 High Street and the flat roofed sections to its rear.

List description revised and category changed from B to A following resurvey (2008).

Statutory address and listed building record revised in 2025. Previously listed as '34-44 High Street (Even Numbers), Hawick Town Hall'.

External Links

• Town Hall at Wikipedia
• Wikidata Q17571524

External links are from the relevant listing authority and, where applicable, Wikidata. Wikidata IDs may be related buildings as well as this specific building. If you want to add or update a link, you will need to do so by editing the Wikidata entry.

Recommended Books

• 
  Bedfordshire, Huntingdonshire, and Peterborough (Pevsner Architectural Guides) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990: Updated version
• 
  ENGLAND GUIDE TO POST WAR LISTED: A Guide to Post-war Listed Buildings
• 
  Kent: West and the Weald: The Buildings of England (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Old House Care and Repair
• 
  Period Property Manual (New Ed)