Old Town Jail, 31 St John Street, Stirling

Old Town Jail, 31 St John Street, Stirling

This is a Grade A listed prison designed by Thomas Brown in 1847. The building was restored and converted to a museum and offices between 1994 and 1996 by Stirling District Council architects, with Ogilvies as main contractor.

The jail is a substantial three-storey structure with basement, arranged in a V-plan with seven bays. It features crenellated parapets and a prominent large round tower to the west. The walls are constructed from dark whinstone squared and snecked rubble with contrasting droved ashlar dressings and quoins. Openings include round-headed and segmental-headed windows and doors, with hoodmoulds, stone mullions, and concave-moulded and chamfered arrises throughout.

The east elevation is symmetrical, with a centre bay containing a deeply chamfered and hoodmoulded round-arched doorway with a two-leaf panelled timber door and decorative astragalled fanlight. The flanking bays contain hoodmoulded windows, and three round-headed windows above with a parapet. The centre bay extends into a second-floor tower topped with a hoodmoulded, round-headed tripartite window below a machicolated parapet. Flanking single-storey bays each have a window and parapet, with segmental-headed windows in the recessed face behind. The outer bays feature full-height parapetted treatment with segmental-headed openings and machicolated, recessed panels.

The round tower to the west elevation is a four-stage engaged tower to the centre bay, with a small three-stage round tower corbelled out from the first floor to the northwest and a three-stage polygonal tower rising above the third stage to the east. The first stage (raised basement) and second stage (ground floor) each have three segmental-headed windows. The third stage contains three windows to the first and second floors connected by narrow vertical panels and a continuous hoodmould forming rounded window heads at second-floor level. The fourth stage has three glazed oculi below a machicolated parapet. The small corbelled tower features two gunloops at first-stage level, one at second-stage and a smaller loop at third-stage, topped with a machicolated parapet. A blind polygonal tower with crenellated parapet is also present.

The west elevation is a thirteen-bay frontage with the round tower at centre and segmental-headed openings throughout. The bays to the right of centre contain four small windows (cells) positioned high in the raised basement, with regular fenestration and parapet above. Two slightly higher advanced outer bays mirror this pattern. The bays to the left of centre match those to the right.

The north elevation features a round-headed doorway with two-leaf panelled timber door and three close-set round-headed windows in the raised basement to the left and centre respectively. Each floor above has three windows to the centre (as described above), with those to the first and second floors set in machicolated panels and narrow round-headed lights in the flanking bays. The south elevation mirrors the north.

Throughout the building, multi-pane glazing is employed, with some windows retaining bars. The roof is covered in graded grey slate, and cast-iron downpipes with decorative rainwater hoppers are present.

The interior retains all cells to the west. Basement cells remain with Victorian jail and military prison detail intact. Cantilevered galleries above were converted to offices during the 1994-1996 restoration. A central beehive panoptican and the former Governor's office with corbelled viewing bay are notable interior features.

The property is enclosed by boundary walls, gatepiers and gates. The St John Street entrance comprises crenellated squared and snecked rubble boundary walls with square-plan, crenellated ashlar gatepiers, each featuring a gunloop to the east and sentry hole to the west, with cast-iron gates. An inner wall with segmental-headed archway and crenellated parapet leads to further cast-iron gates, flanked by semicircular-coped rubble walls. High boundary walls extend to the north, south and west, with a triangular-plan outbuilding at the southwest angle.