Old Town Hall, 31, 33, 35 Castle Street, Banff

Thomas Mackenzie, Elgin, l851-4. Italianate, tall 2-storey, symmetrical 5-bay building to Castle Street with wide return bay

and lower, narrower 2-storey, 3-bay wing to Seafield Street. Dark whinstone with constrasting polished sandstone ashlar dressings and margins.

SEAFIELD STREET FRONTAGE: ground floor with centre door and flanking 3-bay shops; shop windows of original size with pilastered jambs to centre doors and flanking windows. Centre Roman doric pilastered and columned doorpiece with double-leaf panelled door. Tall lst floor with 5 long pedimented and pilastered windows with unusual queen-head capitals; each window fronted by balustered aprons linked by deep corniced bandcourse; horizontal glazing to 12-pane timber sash and case

glazing; plate glass in shop windows. Modillioned eaves; rusticated quoins; paired gable wallhead corniced stacks, each paired linked by 3-arched arcade.

Hall linked at S with No 29 Castle Street by tall round-headed arch with balustraded cornice.

SEAFIELD STREET: return bay of hall lits in ground floor by 3 windows with 8-pane glazing and by large lst floor Corinthian pilastered tripartite with shell motif over centre light; horizontal glazing.

2 SEAFIELD STREET: slightly set back 2-storey, 3-bay wing to Town Hall. Materials as hall; centre entrance with plain panelled double-leaf door, 3 long panelled aproned lst floor windows; timber sash and case glazing as return gable of Town Hall with 2 lower panes blocked, horizontal 12-pane in lst floor windows. Quoins, long and short detailing to windows; wallhead cornice; rear wallhead corniced stack; piended slate roof.

INTERIOR: Doric columned screened entrance hall (4 columns) leading to wide imperial staircase with painted ashlar balustered balustrade. lst floor hall takes up entire 5-bay frontage; coffered ceiling supported by 6 pairs draped female figures, each figure clasping laurel wreath; corniced and canopied pilastered doorpiece; large N pilastered tripartite with composite capitals and egg and dart detailing. Later (?1930s) heavy polished red granite chimneypiece.

2 smaller lst floor rooms each with plain grey marble chimneypiece.