Selkirk Sheriff Court and County Buildings, Ettrick Terrace

The Selkirk Sheriff Court and County Buildings, built between 1868 and 1870, is a substantial, three-storey building with an attic and basement, situated on a steep slope northwest of Selkirk town centre. Constructed in a richly detailed, asymmetrical Scots Baronial style by David Rhind, it is primarily built of rough-faced sandstone with droved ashlar dressings. A base course is present, with a corbelled string course delineating the ground and first floors. The building features crowstepped gables and dormers, along with stop-chamfered window margins. Corbelled round turrets are topped with conical caps and cast iron finials.

The principal, or southeast, elevation has a roll-moulded door surround with a rope-carved hood-mould and knotted stops, leading to a two-leaf panelled door with a semi-circular plate glass fanlight above. A canted oriel window, featuring a piended ashlar roof within a crow-stepped dormer, is positioned above the doorway at both the first and second floors. A corbelled corner tower, to the right of the centre, has a small window at first floor and a round window at second floor. The southwest elevation incorporates an engaged, square-plan tower with a crowstepped gable, flanked by two two-bay crowstepped gables incorporating a wallhead stack. Setbacks to the right of the centre reveal a four-bay, round-arched projecting arcade at ground level and a shield to the gable head. The northwest elevation features a circular-plan, full-height engaged tower in the inner left bay. This tower corbels to a square plan at the third floor, topped with a crow-stepped gable, and has a window on each floor.

The building has four-pane glazing in timber sash and case windows, and a grey slate roof. Ashlar and bull-faced sandstone stacks are also present.

The interior, observed in 2014, is arranged around a first-floor courtroom and retains much of its original 19th-century room plan. A glazed vestibule leads to an internal two-leaf door, and a barley-sugar cast-iron banister serves the principal staircase. The main courtroom includes a timber-panelled Judge's bench with a round-arched white marble chimneypiece and cast iron grate behind it. A central dock is enclosed by cast-iron railings and a timber handrail, with an integrated pop-up hatch floor leading down three flights of enclosed stairs to basement cells. Other features include a timber-panelled jury box and well barrier, raked timber public seating, a timber boarded dado, lugged architraves and a curved, trussed roof with corbels. Elsewhere, a Sheriff's room has a black marble chimneypiece and coved ceiling. A round-plan jurors' room within the rear tower has plain plasterwork, timber-grained shutters and a timber chimneypiece. The hall is decorated with plasterwork, while internal doors are new panelled timber fittings.

The setting includes a whinstone rubble boundary wall with coping, cast iron railings, and square-plan ashlar gatepiers with ball finials.