Town Hall, Market Place, Lauder

The town hall, located on Market Place in Lauder, represents a later 18th-century rebuilding of an earlier structure. It is a two-storey and attic rectangular building, originally incorporating a prison on the ground floor. A clock tower rises from the centre of the building, topped by a spire, and a flight of steps leads to the first-floor entrance. The exterior is harled with sandstone ashlar dressings, and a rendered plinth is visible on the northeast and southwest sides. The gables are coped, featuring block skew putts, and the windows of the upper two storeys have sandstone sills.

The northwest (entrance) elevation is symmetrical. A central first-floor entrance is framed by a Gibbs surround and a pulvinated entablature with a moulded cornice, a boarded timber door, and a pair of blind oculi above, each with splayed voussoirs. A flight of stone steps, with cast iron handrails, leads to ground level. Two cast iron lamp standards, dated 1925, flank the base of the steps, though their lanterns are replacements. The clock tower rises from the centre of the gable, with vertical margins at the arrises and a moulded eaves band. Small, square, architraved windows with louvred vents are present on each side, with a clock face above on the northeast and southeast sides. A small recessed vent is found on the northeast and southwest sides, surmounted by a squat spire and weathervane.

On the southwest elevation, a prison entrance is located to the right of the centre, featuring a heavy boarded timber door reinforced with iron strips. A small window with a cast iron grille is to the right. A central window and one to the right are present on the first floor, with three symmetrically arranged boarded windows in the attic. The northeast elevation has two small windows with cast iron bars on the ground floor, and a single window to the left on the first floor, with another above. The southeast elevation adjoins the building at No. 1 Mid Row.

The windows are predominantly timber sash and case, with twelve panes on the first floor and four or nine panes elsewhere. Attic windows on the south side are boarded. The roof is covered in grey slate, and a later shared coped coursed whinstone stack with sandstone quoins projects from the southeast gable, with octagonal and round cans.

Internally, the ground floor prison consists of two barrel-vaulted cells, the larger one to the west likely originally subdivided into two. A lobby to the west formerly provided access to a small, windowless cell, known as ‘the black hole’, located beneath the main entrance steps. The prison entrance opens onto a small lobby with heavy boarded timber doors leading to each of the main cells. The floor is stone flagged. A rebuilt fireplace with a plain stone surround is located in the east cell. The first floor comprises a single room which served as a court-room and council-chamber, and features a blocked fireplace on the east wall. An entrance vestibule is enclosed by masonry piers rising from the ground floor to support the clock tower; a timber staircase opens off this to the south, providing access to the attic and roof space. The clock tower contains a bell which is believed to have been renewed in 1790.