Musselburgh Tolbooth

Plaque commemorating the centenary of the death of the novelist, Sir Walter Scott

The first building on the site was a 15th-century tolbooth which was destroyed by Lord Hertford during the burning of Edinburgh in May 1544.[3] It featured a clock tower with a tiered octagonal belfry and steeple: the clock had been given to the burgh by Dutch merchants in 1496.[4]

The current structure, which was designed in the Scottish medieval style and built with ashlar stone,[lower-alpha 1] was completed in 1590.[6][7] The design involved an asymmetrical main frontage facing onto the High Street; there was a square tower at the southwest corner which featured an arched doorway on the ground floor, a window with a hood mould on the first floor and then a tall main section, which was constructed in rubble masonry and surmounted with the tiered octagonal belfry and steeple which had been recovered from the first tolbooth.[1] The section to the right on the tower featured a wide pend (passageway) and three small windows on the ground floor, three small but more widely-spaced windows on the first floor and, above a heavily modillioned cornice, five small windows on the second floor.[1] Internally, the ground floor was allocated for market use and the first floor allocated for prison use from an early stage.[3] The tolbooth was the venue for several witchcraft trials including that of Margaret Jo in November 1628 and Janet Lyle in July 1661: Jo was eventually released but Lyle was strangled and then burnt at the stake.[4]

The town house, which was designed by James Crighton in the Palladian style and built in ashlar stone at right angles to the tolbooth, was completed in 1733.[2] The design involved a symmetrical main frontage with three bays facing northeast along the High Street; it featured a rounded doorway flanked by two round-headed windows on the ground floor, and three sash windows on the first floor.[2] The central window on the first floor had a triangular pediment and the other two windows had segmental pediments.[2]

Following the Jacobite rising of 1745, some of the Bonnie Prince Charlie's supporters were imprisoned in the tolbooth before being sentenced to transportation overseas.[8] A council chamber, which was barrel vaulted[1] and accessed using an external staircase, was installed on the first floor of the tolbooth in 1762.[9] A series of vaulted prison cells accessed from vaulted corridors were installed on the first and second floors of the tolbooth in the first half of the 19th century.[3]

A large assembly hall was erected in the area behind the two buildings in the mid-19th century and modified to a design by William Constable in 1901.[10] In 1932, as part of the arrangements to commemorate the centenary of the death of the novelist, Sir Walter Scott, a plaque was placed on the wall of the tolbooth recording Scott's residency in quarters in Musselburgh while serving as a quartermaster in the Royal Edinburgh Volunteer Light Dragoons during the Napoleonic Wars.[11] The complex became known as the "municipal buildings" from around that time and continued to serve as the headquarters of Musselburgh Burgh Council for much of the 20th century[12] until new municipal buildings at Brunton Hall were completed in 1970.[13][14] The ground floor of the town house was subsequently let for retail use but the first floor of the town house and the whole of the tolbooth subsequently remained vacant: in 2016, an option appraisal was carried out with a view to bringing the upper floors of the tolbooth back into use, with the access either through the pend or through the town house.[15][16]

• List of Category A listed buildings in East Lothian
• List of listed buildings in Musselburgh, East Lothian