The Courthouse, High Street, Peebles

The building was designed by Thomas Brown II and built 1844-48 with (mostly interior) alterations by Kinnear and Dick Peddie in 1892. It is a 2-storey (4 storey at rear) 3-bay, irregular-plan, former court house and jail in the Jacobean style. It is prominently positioned at the western head of the High Street on ground sloping down towards the river at the rear.

The building is of cream sandstone ashlar with chamfered reveals, hood moulds and a moulded string course between the ground and first floors. There is a parapet with shallow pilasters terminating in tall octagonal stacks with chamfered bases and heavy coping. The central (entrance) bay is gabled with a round-arched window in the gablehead. There are tripartite windows at the first floor. The gabled bay on the south elevation has an apex finial rising from a corbelled shaft over chamfered corners. There are Gothic windows in the re-entrant angle to the rear and the rear elevation is whinstone rubble. The windows are mostly a 12-pane glazing pattern in timber sash and case frames. The roof has grey slates.

Attached to the rear elevation are high rubble boundary walls with a rounded cope.

The interior was partially seen in 2014 and has a Jacobean plasterwork ceiling of the former court at first floor. The entrance vestibule has moulded surrounds to the inner doorway with round-arched glazed sections. There is a dentiled plasterwork ceiling in the adjoining room. At the centre of the building is an open well staircase with barley-twist bannisters and cupola. The former basement cells have segmental-arched ceilings and metal doors.