Tweedale District Council Offices, Rosetta Road, Peebles

Tweedale District Council Offices, Rosetta Road, Peebles

This building comprises a poorhouse originally designed by William Lambie Moffat in 1856, which was extensively rebuilt and extended by Dick Peddie and Walker Todd in 1935. The original quadrangular poorhouse was refurbished with a new neo-Baroque front range added. The building is harled with polished cream ashlar dressings.

The front range is the principal feature, consisting of a 2-storey and attic 5-bay piend-roofed central block flanked by advanced single-storey single-bay pavilions. At the centre sits an ogee-roofed octagonal cupola with a balustraded platform and pineapple finial. The base is a course of ashlar facing up to ground floor cills, with a band course above the ground floor and cill course at the second floor. Long and short quoins punctuate the elevations, and fenestration is regular throughout. The first floor windows sit with a lintel course hard under block-modillioned timber eaves. The ashlar centrepiece features an architraved doorway with a crest at the centre and a massive consoled cornice at the level of the band course, which supports a first floor window with architrave and scrolled consoles terminated by foliate flourishes at the ashlar cornice. Pair of lamp standards flank the doorway. The 2-leaf panelled door has a stylised lion's head knocker and leads to glazed inner doors. Three pilastered and corniced timber box dormers with vertical oval windows rise above. The pavilions have 2-bay return elevations; the north pavilion displays a partly blocked and glazed doorway with roll-moulded architrave and a date stone inscribed 1935.

The rear range is 2-storey in H-plan with regular fenestration and chamfered arrises. The first floor windows break the eaves with swept piend-roofed dormerheads and overhanging eaves, and a base course runs below.

The south-east elevation has 6 bays. The central four bays contain windows to both floors, the left bay has a door and window at ground with a stair window above, and the right bay has a panelled door with a 3-pane fanlight at ground level and is blank above.

The north-east elevation comprises 5 bays at centre flanked by projecting gabled bays, with a first floor window in the centre bay hard under the eaves. Quadrant screen walls with doorways adjoin separate pavilions.

The north-west elevation has 6 bays with 2 bipartite and 2 single windows at ground and a panelled door at the centre.

Both pavilions are single-storey with gable ends and bipartite windows with timber mullions. They have blind slits to the north-east gables and windows to the south-west gables. The inner elevations feature 3 bays with a panelled door at the centre, while the outer walls are blank.

Throughout the building, timber sash and case windows with horns feature 12 panes (15 panes at ground to the front). The roof is covered in grey slates with ashlar-coped skews and corbel skewputts. Rendered stacks with ashlar quoins are coped, and cast-iron downpipes and gutters with moulded rainwater heads bearing laurel wreaths complete the external details.

The interior is remarkably intact with a 1930s scheme by Scott Morton & Co. The Council Chamber is top-lit and panelled, with sub-Lorimer furniture and a raised recessed dais at one end. Panelled doors and corresponding door furniture occur throughout.

The gatepiers and boundary walls feature square panelled ashlar gatepiers to the front with quadrant walls linked by low squared and snecked bull-faced sandstone walls with saddleback ashlar coping; the railings have been removed. Rubble side and rear walls have semi-circular coping. A small harled piend-roofed shed abuts the walls in the north corner. Cast-iron lamp standards with crests painted on glazed copper lanterns flank the front door.