Town Hall, High Street, Hawick

The Town Hall, built in 1884-6, was designed by James Campbell Walker as a three-story, irregularly-shaped Scottish Baronial building on a corner site on Hawick’s High Street. The building is constructed from sandstone ashlar and features a prominent, four-stage, pyramidal-roofed corner tower with finialled, conical-roofed bartizans. It has finialled dormers set within pediments, crowstepped gables, and a base course with a stepped string course forming the cills of the second-floor windows; continuous hoodmoulds also run above the second-floor windows. A stepped string course accents the tower, which includes clock faces with prominent voussoirs, louvred, pedimented dormers, and louvred vents halfway up the tower’s upper stage. The tower roof carries a weathervane.

The principal (High Street) elevation is four bays wide, with the corner tower on the right. A recessed entrance is contained within a round-arched architrave in the left bay, while a similar arched section tops the window on the right. The first floor features a slightly projecting, tripartite window at the center, surmounted by a crest, flanked by bipartite windows with shallow, corbelled, balustraded balconies. A canted window is incorporated into the tower.

The side (Cross Wynd) elevation, roughly eight bays wide, follows the steeply sloping ground, with the facade stepping outward and upward toward the rear (east). It includes a pedimented wallhead dormer to the second bay from the left, a first-floor bartizan in the re-entrant angle between the second and third bays, and a gabletted dormer with overhanging eaves to the third bay. The fifth bay rises to four stories, while the seventh bay features a four-story, conical-roofed, circular tower. The ridge-roofed section to the outer right is irregularly fenestrated and includes a crenellated parapet to the left and a lower, single-story section to the far right.

The building has timber sash and case windows with plate glass and multi-pane glazing. The roof is covered in grey slate with metal ridges, and the bartizans are finished with fish scale slates.

Inside, the entrance lobby is decorated with glazed ceramic wall tiling. A central stone staircase features an elaborate, foliate-patterned wrought-iron balustrade and a polished timber handrail, with various secondary stone stairs also present, some with simple metal balustrades and timber handrails. The Council Chamber contains a highly ornate timber chimney piece bearing the Hawick coat of arms, matching furniture, and a timber-beamed ceiling. The former Police Court has panelled detailing around a central, ridge-roofed skylight. A galleried principal function room is supported by slender cast-iron columns. Principal public areas are accessed by 6-panel timber doors and half-glazed, timber-panelled doors with stained glass, while office areas have 4-panel timber doors. Some areas feature tongue-and-groove panelling to dado height.