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Summary

Description

James Matthews and William Lawrie, 1876, with circa 1880s extension to the rear. 2-storey with attic, 2 bays to street elevation, irregular plan French Gothic style court house set on raised ground. Squared and snecked red sandstone with sandstone ashlar chamfered quoins.Rendered brick rear elevation. Stone base course and cill course.String course incorporating hoodmoulds at first floor. Entrance accessed from squared 3 stage tower to north with a window to each stage. Hoodmould to second stage of tower. Frieze to tower attic with cornice, trefoil and quatrefoil blind windows, and central round arches supporting stone ball finials. Architraved single pane shallow pointed arch windows, all with hoodmould above, terminating in scrolls and corbels. Small blind trefoil windows at attic.

Multi-gabled roof with slates, lead skews and decorative skewputts. Tower with slated pyramidal roof with brattishing. Cast iron downpipes.

The interior, seen in 2014, retains much of the 1876 plan, arranged with the court and public offices on the ground floor with a southwest facing principal courtroom on the first floor. This courtroom has a high, coombed ceiling with simple moulded cornicing and decorative roof vents. Some of the timber courtroom furniture has been replaced in a 19th century Gothic period style, such as the the timber panelled sheriff's bench. Open well with stone staircase with decorative metal banister and timber railing at entrance providing access to first floor. Secondary rooms and offices include decorative cornicing, roses and panelled doors, and a number of fireplaces (many now boarded up). Timber panelling to dado in hallways at ground floor. Some hallway penings have shallow pointed arches. Dog-leg stair, with simple metal railings and timber banister to rear elevation. Turnpike stone stair from first floor to attic level.

Rendered stone boundary wall to northwest, southwest and southeast, with metal railings and shallow pyramidal capped piers.

Statement of Special Interest

Fort William Sheriff Court dates to 1876 and was designed by the successful architectural practice, Matthews and Lawrie. Built from high quality materials, it has a distinctive and prominent street elevation designed in the French Gothic style with a landmark square tower. Internally, the court has been moderately altered and repaired in a Gothic style.

Although rural and relatively remote in the late 19th century, Fort William was a trading and travel centre and the court house served the local community and the wider area of Lochaber. The court house first appears on the 2nd Edition Ordnance Survey map (surveyed 1899), and its footprint is largely unchanged from this date. Repair work carried out to the building in the 1990s by the Scottish Court Service revealed that the rear of the building was constructed in brick and therefore a later extension to the original court house. Some early 19th century court houses were extended in the 1880s and the extension to the Fort William court house may date to this period.

The partnership of Matthews and Lawrie grew out of Mackenzie and Matthews. When Thomas Mackenzie died in 1854 the Inverness office was established with William Lawrie in charge as resident assistant and finally becoming a partner in 1864. Matthews continued the Aberdeen office alone (he designed the court house in Banff 1871). Matthews and Lawrie were commissioned to design a number of court houses in the Highland region, such as at Kingussie (1864) and Portree (1865-77) (see separate listings).

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. 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.

Listed as part of the Scottish Courts Listing Review 2014-15.

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