Town Hall, Betson Street, Markinch

The building is a town hall, dating from 1876, with a tower and porch added in 1897, likely designed by Gillespie and Scott. It is a gabled hall with a single-storey porch and a three-stage tower. The exterior is a mix of cement render and squared and snecked rubble stonework, with ashlar quoins and dressings. Features include a chamfered plinth, a moulded string course and a band course, tabbed margins and stone mullions.

The northwest tower has a first stage with a basement level to the north, accessed by steps leading to a round-headed door. It includes a deep-set timber door within an ogee-lintelled doorway with voussoirs to the west, a window to the north, and an abutting hall to the south. The second and third stages also have windows, with a tall stair window in an advanced gabled bay. The third stage displays a square tablet on the west face inscribed "Presented to the Burgh by J T Smith, JP, 55 years a partner of the firm R Tullis & Coy - 1897," with narrow arrow slits above on each face. Large, semicircular, voussoired windows break the band course on each face below a cavetto cornice with water spouts at the northwest, southwest and southeast corners, all topped by a coped parapet with balustrades at the centre of each face.

The west (entrance) elevation has a slightly projecting, large single-storey, flat-roofed porch adjoining the tower to the north, partially concealing the earlier hall behind. It features a two-leaf panelled timber door with plate glass fanlight in a lugged, architraved doorcase, with bipartite windows in flanking bays. The wallhead has ashlar coping swept up at the corners. A wide gablehead to the hall is topped by a large window and a date stone inscribed 1876, flanked by smaller windows. Square ashlar pedestals are at the apex, with a gablet on each face and a decorative cast-iron weathervane.

The north elevation is characterised by five tall windows spaced regularly, with a lower lean-to entrance to the outer left. The south elevation has a projecting gable to the outer left, with a bipartite window at the first floor; further details are obscured.

Most upper windows have small panes, while lower windows have two panes, with a 22-pane glazing pattern to the hall windows. The roof is covered in grey slates. Ashlar sawtooth coping is present on the skewbacks, and cast-iron downpipes feature decorative rainwater hoppers, one dated 1876, on the south elevation.

The interior has a boarded, open-beamed ceiling with collar and hammer-braced elements resting on scrolled corbels.

The site includes a pair of battered ashlar gatepiers with pyramidal heads, connected by decorative railing linking one pier to the tower.