Court House, High Street, Irvine

The Court House on High Street in Irvine, designed by J Ingram in 1859, is an Italianate, two-storey, seven-bay building with a T-plan layout and a four-stage tower. It is constructed from weathered sandstone ashlar, featuring a channelled ground level, a base course, a cornice, consoled eaves cornice, and a balustrade with dies. The building has channelled quoins and roughly coursed rubble at the rear. The openings are round-arched with keystones and dividing pilasters.

On the south elevation facing High Street, there is a two-tier classical porch at the center, which is part of the lower stage of the tower. This porch has paired columns on pedestals, an entablature, and railings leading to a first-floor balcony. The ground level features a two-leaf door with fielded panelling and a semicircular fanlight, along with a door at the first floor. The flanking bays have regular fenestration with architraved arch heads at the first floor. The tower rises to 120 feet, with the lower stage serving as the two-tier porch. The second stage is a square panelled shaft with a bracketed block cornice, while the third stage has tripartite pilastered faces with a louvred round arch at the center and an entablature above. The fourth stage culminates in a tall, elegant polygonal lantern with a clock at the base of the center face, narrow round-arched louvred openings on each side, a bracketed cornice, and a leaded roof topped with a weathervane finial.

The southeast elevation features a three-bay section to the left with a single-storey, flat-roofed stone porch projection at ground level and three windows at the first floor, two of which are blinded. The taller body of the council chamber is recessed to the right and has paired round-arched windows.

The building has timber sash and case windows with four-pane glazing and semicircular upper lights, and the first-floor window on the southwest side has lying-pane glazing.

The interior, not seen in 1996, is noted to have a decorative mosaic tiled vestibule floor featuring the town's motto and logo, 'Tandem Bona Causa Triumphat,' along with a lion seated. Originally, the building housed council chambers, a court hall, a library, and offices.

In front of the court house, there is a pair of lantern lamps with fluted standards and decorative carved brackets, along with lanterns displaying painted crests. The foundry plate on these lamps is illegible.