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Summary

Description

Thomas Brown, 1843, former jail and walled courtyard; remodelled and extended by Andrew Maitland, 1870 to form 2-storey, multi-gabled, L-plan county building and court house in the Tudor style. Stugged ashlar coursers, polished dressings. Corbelled-out wallhead stacks with tall octagonal flues and moulded skews. Belfry to far-right.

Former jail block to rear with high horizontal window openings (some blocked), shouldered skews and some multi-pane timber windows.

Mostly 4-pane glazing in timber sash and case windows. Grey slate roof. Cast iron rainwater goods.

The interior, seen 2014, was refurbished following a fire in 1989. Courtroom remodelled in 1993-96. Surviving elements include the decorative cast iron banister and curving timber handrail, scrolled at newel post, to principal staircase. Vaulted ceilings to ground floor rooms and studded cell doors surviving in former jail block to rear. Plain cornicing to hall and courtroom.

Segmental archway to red sandstone rubble boundary wall adjoining south elevation leading to high, enclosed rubble walled courtyard to rear. Low rubble boundary wall to street with coping stones and cast-iron railings. Square-plan ashlar gatepiers with ball finials.

Statement of Special Interest

Stornoway Sheriff Court is a well-detailed late 19th century remote Scottish county court house with good quality Tudor detailing and an early example of a court adapted and extended from an early prison building on the same site, representing the two important phases of changes to the Scottish Law: the 1833 Police Burgh Act and the 1860 Sheriff Court Houses (Scotland) of 1860. The 1843 jail block to the rear by Thomas Brown has been sensitively added to by Andrew Maitland, an equally well recognised architect of the later 19th century, in a complimentary historicist style. The 1870 additions are well-detailed, including hoodmoulded doorpieces, shouldered gables and distinctively tall octagonal stacks, corbelled out from the wall head.

The Inverness Courier (4 August 1870) noted that the new Stornoway Court formed 'a considerable feature in the ornament of the town' with 'the plan by Mr Maitland showing great skill adapting the new building to the style of the old with advantage'. The light coloured stone was imported from Glasgow and the Co-operative Building Company, Inverness were the contractors.

The high walled courtyard of the 1843 jail remains in situ and forms a distinctive component of the Stornoway Sheriff Court complex. The former jail to the rear retains fabric from the earlier building, including cross-vaulted ceilings to ground floor rooms and studded cell doors, and has been converted to offices and rooms serving the court.

The Tain County Architect Andrew Maitland provided the design for Stornoway working alongside his sons James and Andrew II as assistants. The building was one of their few commissions outside of Ross-shire. The Tudor style adopted at Stronoway was also used to good effect at Linlithgow Sheriff Court by Thomas Brown and James Maitland Wardrop (1862) (see separate listing). Andrew Maitland also reworked Thomas Brown's 1846-9 court house in Tain in 1873.

The development of the court house as a building type in Scotland follows the history of the Scottish legal system and wider government reforms. The majority of purpose-built court houses were constructed in the 19th century as by this time there was an increase in the separation of civic, administrative and penal functions into separate civic and institutional buildings, and the resultant surge of public building was promoted by new institutional bodies. The introduction of the Sheriff Court Houses (Scotland) Act of 1860 gave a major impetus to the increase and improvement of court accommodation and the provision of central funding was followed by the most active period of sheriff court house construction in the history of the Scottish legal system, and many new court houses were built or reworked after this date.

Court houses constructed after 1860 generally had a solely legal purpose and did not incorporate a prison, other than temporary holding cells. Exceptions to this were the more remote island locations including Kirkwall; Lochmaddy, North Uist; Stornoway in the Western Isles and Tobermory, Mull (see separate listings). The courts were designed in a variety of architectural styles but often relied heavily on Scots Baronial features to reference the fortified Scottish building tradition. Newly constructed court buildings in the second half of the 19th century dispensed with large public spaces such as county halls and instead provided bespoke office accommodation for the sheriff, judge and clerks, and accommodated the numerous types of court and holding cells.

Statutory address and listed building record revised as part of the Scottish Courts Listing Review, 2014-15. Previously listed as 'Lewis Street, Court House'.

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