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Summary

Description

David Smart, 1886-7. Well-detailed 2-storey, 5-bay, H-plan Town Hall with French influence detail to principal façade with full-height canted bay surmounted by slated spire and outer pavilion-roofed entrance bays with stone balustraded consoled cornices and fine brattishing. Stugged ashlar with rusticated and polished dressings; battered base course, cill courses, band course and eaves cornice with blocking course. Keystoned, segmental headed doorpieces.

FURTHER DESCRIPTION: symmetrical principal elevation to SE with commemorative plaque (see Notes), 4-light canted windows to each floor of ball-finialled, polygonal-spired centre bay with 'VICTORIA' 'BUILDING' to carved frieze over cornice; doors to outer bays with French windows at 1st floor below balustrade with urn-finialled dies, and pavilion roof and fine brattishing. Piend-roofed hall elevations to NE and SW with transomed and mullioned stair windows; door to centre of 7-bay symmetrical NW elevation with small segmental window in broad nepus gable.

Leaded diamond-pattern glazing to main hall windows; coloured margins to stair windows, 6-pane glazing pattern and plate glass glazing to timber sash and case windows elsewhere except 1st floor NW with replacement 6-pane glazing pattern in top-opening windows. Grey slates, banded to spire and pavilion roofs. Corbelled chimney breasts (to SW and NE), each dated 1887 and rising into banded and corniced shouldered stack with polygonal cans; broad corniced gablehead stacks with polygonal cans to rear range, that to SW truncated. Stepped ashlar-coped skews with moulded skewputts. Cast iron downpipes with decorative rainwater hoppers dated 1886, decorative fixings and square-section gutters.

INTERIOR: some good interior detail retained including moulded cornices, architraved panelled doors, panelled and boarded timber reveals and cast iron radiators. Front building comprising Lesser Hall converted to library, now with arcade (formerly wall); SW entrance with part-glazed screen door, black and white tiled floor, timber ticket booth, dog-leg staircase with cast iron barley twist balusters and decorative newel post; NW entrance with cantilevered timber balustraded dog-leg staircase; former Council Chamber (now sub-divided, see Notes) at 1st floor with timber fire surrounds and decorative cast iron roof ventilator. Main Hall with hammerbeam roof, boarded dadoes, stage at NW end and timber-fronted raked gallery at SW. Further staircase with decorative cast iron balusters to accommodation at rear block.

BOUNDARY WALLS: low saddleback coped rubble boundary walls.

Statement of Special Interest

Coupar Angus Town Hall, also known as Victoria Halls, is well-detailed and prominently sited on a main highway at the eastern edge of the town. Its distinctive French influence, particularly evident in the pavilion-roofed entrance bays, makes it an unusual and attractive addition to the Victorian streetscape. Increasing development of small towns and burghs following from the Municipal reform Act of 1833, led only slowly to an increase in purpose built council offices, but public halls were more popular. The traditional tollbooth style remained in favour but some towns were more adventurous, for example with Jacobean influence seen at Birnam and Pitlochry, and this fine quality French influence example at Coupar Angus.

The hall was built, at a cost of £4,000, to celebrate Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee. A plaque, situated beside the easternmost door at the principal elevation, commemorates the Polish soldiers billeted in the area during WWII. Written in both Polish and English, it reads "IN / REMEMBRANCE / OF OUR / SOJOURN / THE SOLDIERS OF IMED.REG.A / 1941-1942". The Council Chamber was originally located at the rear of the building in what is now the manager's flat.

The architect David Smart was born in nearby Alyth in 1824 and worked in the office of David Bryce before buying William Macdonald Mackenzie's Perth practice in 1858. The Dictionary of Scottish Architects notes that "By the late 1870s his public and commercial buildings had become Victorian late classic with French roofs", an accurate description of the Coupar Angus Town Hall, and continued "a development perhaps associated with James Smart, who was either his nephew or his son and was his partner from at least 1887".

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