Forfar Sheriff Court House Market Street and Brechin Road, Forfar

Forfar Sheriff Court House

A substantial two-storey court house with attic storey, designed by James Maitland Wardrop and built between 1869 and 1871. The building occupies an elevated site overlooking the town and is constructed in the Flemish-Baronial style, arranged on a symmetrical U-plan with seven bays. A two-storey rectangular former police station adjoins the northeast corner.

The exterior is built of squared and snecked red sandstone with ashlar dressings. Decorative features include a base course and cill course at first floor level, a band course between the second floor and attic, and a crenellated parapet. Crowstepped gables with decorative finials and stone mullions and transoms characterise the fenestration, with bipartite windows to most elevations and tripartite windows to the advanced gables. Hoodmouldings grace the windows throughout, whilst those at ground floor incorporate stepped forms and armorial panels. Gabled and bargeboarded timber dormers punctuate the roofline, which is covered in slate with ridge stacks that rise into octagonal flues and corniced stacks to the gables of the rear elevation.

The principal south elevation features a two-storey, five-bay centre section flanked by advanced crowstepped gables. These gables are adorned with diagonally set, crocketed pinnacles and mock griffon gargoyles at their bases. A four-centred arched doorway at the centre is flanked by buttressed piers supporting a bracketed balcony at first floor level, which has a pierced quatrefoil parapet and panelled piers topped with ball urns and griffons. A carved armorial panel appears above the central first floor window and below the crowstepped gable. The west elevation features a circular tower at its centre, incorporating an arcaded eaves course with rope mouldings and carved griffons, topped by a candle snuffer roof with weathervane. The east elevation has a crowstepped gabled porch.

The former police station block displays first floor windows that break the wallhead with triangular dormerheads and finials, and features an entrance in the re-entrant angle with a rope-moulded hoodmould.

Windows throughout are timber-framed sash and case types. The curved imperial entrance stairs descend along Market Street, flanked by coped, squared and coursed masonry walls with chamfered square piers topped with pyramidal caps. A high rubble wall with round cope protects the rear of the court house.

The interior is arranged around a south-facing courtroom at first floor level. A half-turn stone staircase with decorative cast-iron balustrade topped by a timber handrail provides vertical circulation, with coombed ceilings above the staircase. Three courtrooms are present. Courtroom 1 features original panelled timber fixtures including the Judge's bench, witness box, dock, and well barrier with panelling to dado height on the walls. The timber panelling to the jury box is not original but matches the style. A carved stone coat of arms is mounted on the centre of the south wall. Notable is the hammerbeam timber roof with trusses resting on carved stone corbels bearing thistle, rose, shamrock and daffodil motifs. Quatrefoil carved timber vents appear in the ceiling. Courtroom 2, located at first floor southeast, has timber boarding and panelling to dado with a moulded cornice. Courtroom 3, at ground floor to the left of the main entrance, contains late twentieth-century fixtures and fittings. The main entrance features a two-leaf door to Courtroom 1 set in a deep architrave with panelled jambs. Corridors have round arched openings, some with later panelled doors. Panelled timber doors in moulded architraves occur throughout, and some windows retain splayed architraves and panelled timber shutters. Ancillary rooms retain timber fireplaces and moulded cornicing.