Fort William Sheriff Court

James Matthews and William Lawrie, 1876, with circa 1880s extension to the rear. 2-storey with attic, 2 bays to street elevation, irregular plan French Gothic style court house set on raised ground. Squared and snecked red sandstone with sandstone ashlar chamfered quoins.Rendered brick rear elevation. Stone base course and cill course.String course incorporating hoodmoulds at first floor. Entrance accessed from squared 3 stage tower to north with a window to each stage. Hoodmould to second stage of tower. Frieze to tower attic with cornice, trefoil and quatrefoil blind windows, and central round arches supporting stone ball finials. Architraved single pane shallow pointed arch windows, all with hoodmould above, terminating in scrolls and corbels. Small blind trefoil windows at attic.

Multi-gabled roof with slates, lead skews and decorative skewputts. Tower with slated pyramidal roof with brattishing. Cast iron downpipes.

The interior, seen in 2014, retains much of the 1876 plan, arranged with the court and public offices on the ground floor with a southwest facing principal courtroom on the first floor. This courtroom has a high, coombed ceiling with simple moulded cornicing and decorative roof vents. Some of the timber courtroom furniture has been replaced in a 19th century Gothic period style, such as the the timber panelled sheriff's bench. Open well with stone staircase with decorative metal banister and timber railing at entrance providing access to first floor. Secondary rooms and offices include decorative cornicing, roses and panelled doors, and a number of fireplaces (many now boarded up). Timber panelling to dado in hallways at ground floor. Some hallway penings have shallow pointed arches. Dog-leg stair, with simple metal railings and timber banister to rear elevation. Turnpike stone stair from first floor to attic level.

Rendered stone boundary wall to northwest, southwest and southeast, with metal railings and shallow pyramidal capped piers.