Montrose Town House

The first municipal building in Montrose was a medieval tolbooth which stood in the middle of the High Street:[2][lower-alpha 1] it was primarily used as a prison and, by the mid-18th century, the burgh leaders decided that the town needed a dedicated assembly room for civic events.[1]

The building was designed by John Hutcheson in the neoclassical style, built in local stone and was completed in 1764.[1][5] The design involved a symmetrical main frontage with five bays facing north along the High Street; it was originally just two storeys high but was increased in height and extended to the rear by a local builder, John Balfour,[6] to a design by William Smith with funding from a local guild in 1818.[1] The extension to the rear was erected on land which had previously formed part of the churchyard of Montrose Old and St Andrew's Church and so a crypt was built under the town house to avoid disturbing family vaults.[7][8]

The enlarged building featured a rusticated loggia, for merchants to meet each other, on the ground floor,[9] five sash windows with cornices, three of which were consoled, on the first floor and five plain sash windows on the second floor.[1] At roof level, there was a balustrade and a pediment with a clock in the tympanum above the central three bays.[1] Internally, the principal rooms were the courtroom at the back of the building on the first floor, the council chamber at the front of the building on the second floor and a guildhall for the local guild at the back of the building on the second floor.[4]

The Montrose Library, which had been established in the town house in 1785, relocated to the museum buildings in 1898.[10] The town house was refaced in ashlar stone in 1908,[4] and continued to serve as the headquarters of the burgh council for much of the 20th century,[11] but ceased to be the local seat of government when the enlarged Angus District Council was formed at County Buildings in Forfar in 1975.[12] A sculpture by William Lamb entitled "Bill the Smith", which had been modelled on a blacksmith working at the steel fabrication yard of Harry Maiden in New Wynd, was unveiled outside the town house in 2001.[13]

Works of art in the town house include a portrait by John Prescott Knight of the locally-born former Lord Mayor of London, Sir James Duke, which hangs in the council chamber.[6][14]

• List of listed buildings in Montrose, Angus
• List of Category A listed buildings in Angus