Tolbooth, Tain Sheriff Court

Tain Sheriff Court is a court house built in the 1840s and subsequently altered, prominently situated on the main road in the town. The main block was designed by Thomas Brown II and constructed between 1848 and 1849, with additions and alterations made in 1873 by A Maitland and Sons. It incorporates a tolbooth dating from 1706 to 1733, located to the southeast. The court house is built in a Scots Baronial and Tudor style and is two storeys and an attic with a symmetrical three-bay main elevation. A gabled bay returns to Castle Brae, forming part of the 1873 alterations. It is constructed of tooled ashlar with ashlar dressings and chamfered angles, featuring a string course at ground floor level that connects the hoodmoulds. A central doorway is flanked by pairs of round arched windows. The first floor has three bipartite round arched windows, each with squared hoodmoulds. A crenellated parapet tops the building, with corbelled angle turrets and conical roofs topped by ball finials. A four-bay elevation facing Castle Brae is of coursed rubble with ashlar dressings.

The tolbooth, constructed between 1706 and 1733 by contractor Alexander Stronach, is a large, square-plan, two-stage tower constructed of coursed rubble. The south elevation features a moulded, round arched doorway, contemporary with the later court house, above which is a niche containing a lion rampant. Single windows are present on each stage, with chamfered reveals. The west elevation has a round arched window at ground floor level, with small blind windows on the second and third stages. Four small angle turrets are topped with stone conical roofs, ball finials and diminutive gabletted openings. This detailing is echoed in the centre steeple, which is topped by a later weather vane. A later corbelled parapet, added circa 1877, houses clock faces. A bronze Seaforth Highlanders memorial plaque is fixed to the ground floor, commemorating the lives of 8432 soldiers from the ten battalions of the regiment who died in the First World War.

The interior, as viewed in 2014, is arranged around a central, southwest-facing courtroom on the ground floor, with an open well staircase to the east. The courtroom features six-panel doors, a high, deeply coved ceiling with thin ribs, bosses, moulded and decorative cornicing, decorative plaster quatrefoil roof vents, and an ornate central rose. Public seating and courtroom fittings were replaced in the 1980s in a period style. Two shallow niches flank the wall behind the bench, and a third niche is located on the rear (north) wall of the courtroom. Elaborate decorative cornicing is found in other rooms and hallways, and panelled doors are present throughout, with moulded architraves. The staircase has decorative metal barley twist balusters and a timber handrail. Windows are timber sash and case, most with panelled shutters. The interior of the tolbooth has an open well stone stair with decorative metal railing and a timber banister. A stone turnpike stair continues to the first floor, leading to the bell chamber.