Town Hall, High Street, Crieff

The Town Hall, dated 1850, is a two-storey and basement crowstepped hall with a tall, two-stage tower, situated on a site where the ground slopes steeply to the south. It is constructed from squared and snecked red sandstone rock-faced rubble with sandstone ashlar dressings, featuring base and moulded eaves courses. The windows are pointed- and shoulder-arched, with relieving arches and chamfered reveals.

The north elevation, facing High Street, has a crowstepped gable with a tall window in the centre and a prominent round gablehead stack on a gabletted base. The west (entrance) elevation features a tower projecting in the bay to the left of centre, with a narrow blank bay to the outer left. The bays to the right of centre each have a square-headed window below a relieving arch at ground level and a pointed-arch window at the first floor, breaking into a crowstepped gablet. A slightly set-back, low lean-to crowstepped bay extends to the right, containing a door and a rounded outer right angle corbelled to square at the eaves.

The tower’s first stage is engaged, with a broad two-leaf timber door below a carved panel bearing the Crieff coat-of-arms. A moulded dividing course at eaves height gives way to a single window at the base of the largely blank second stage. Each elevation has a clock face set within a carved stone Gothic-detailed surround, and the tower is surmounted by a moulded cornice broken by gabletted louvered openings and a pyramidal spire topped with a decorative cast-iron weathervane.

The south (Cornton Place) elevation displays a variety of elements, including a projecting crowstepped gable with a dominant gablehead stack and a chamfered left angle corbelled to square at the low eaves. A higher recessed face of the hall features a window in the crowstepped gable.

The windows of the pointed arches have a decoratively-astragalled margined glazing pattern, except for the south-facing window, which has 8-pane glazing. Four-pane and plate glass glazing patterns are used in the timber sash and case windows elsewhere. The roof is covered in grey slates with coped and shouldered ashlar stacks. Ashlar-coped skews have moulded skewputts.

The interior features a winding stone stair leading to the first-floor Council Chamber, which has a groin-vaulted ceiling. A marble panel dated 1838 commemorates Sir Patrick Murray of Ochtertyre, founder of the Strathearn Agricultural Society.