Town Hall, 23 Broad Street, Kirkwall

The Town Hall, built in 1884 by T S Peace and renovated in 1984, is a three-storey and attic, asymmetrical, rectangular-plan Baronial building situated on a corner site in Kirkwall. It abuts a property to the south, which is not listed. The design incorporates armorial details and is built of squared and coursed rubble with sandstone ashlar dressings.

The principal, east, elevation features a slightly advanced, full-height central entrance bay with corbelled, conical-roofed bartizans flanking a crowstepped gable. A castellated gablehead tower spans two bays to the right, and there is a canted northeast angle. Flanking the doorway are engaged, fluted columns supporting statues, with a floreate lintel at ground level. The doorway is framed by a bossed, two-leaf, timber-panelled door and a moulded frame featuring a carved overdoor panel with the inscription "TOWN HALL" and the date 1884, set above a fluted baluster-columned aedicule with a carved armorial panel. The first floor has a tripartite window with a blank shield panel above, and a single window is positioned on the second floor. A round-headed attic window sits within the thistle-finialled gable. Slit windows are set in the bartizans. To the left, a bipartite window is located at each floor, with a gabletted dormer window above. To the right, a single window is present at ground level, followed by a bipartite window on the first floor and a single window on the second floor. A small, low-set window is incorporated into the consolled, square-plan tower, which features machicolation detail to the gablehead, topped with a flagpole. A tall doorway with two-leaf timber-panelled doors is located at ground level in a canted bay to the outer right, with a square-corbelled bipartite window above at the first floor and a round-corbelled single window on the second floor. The north side elevation is irregularly fenestrated.

The building has predominantly two-pane timber sash and case windows at ground level, with small-pane glazing and some stained glass in the upper lights of the remaining windows, which are paired with plain timber-framed panes below. The roof is covered in purple Welsh slate, with fish scale tiles on the bartizans. Other roof details include a stone ridge, a polygonal terminal to the south skew, a cavetto-moulded skewputt to the north, a dressed rubble gablehead stack to the south, and a tall, coped wallhead stack to the north. Cast-iron rainwater goods with decorative attachments and hoppers are also present.

The interior has been converted into a modern tea shop on the ground floor to the north. A modern ground floor entrance provides access to a steel-framed staircase leading to timber-lined offices on the first floor. A three-light stained glass window, depicting Henry St Clair, Earl of Orkney; James III; and King Haakon Haakonsson, by A Ballantine and Gardiner, dated 1892, is present in the west wall of the first-floor hall, although it was not fully visible during a 1998 survey.