31, 33, 35 Castle Street and 2 Seafield Street, Town Hall, Banff
Description: 31, 33, 35 Castle Street and 2 Seafield Street, Town Hall
Category: A
Date Listed: 22 February 1972
Historic Scotland Building ID: 21941
OS Grid Coordinates: 368838, 864205
Latitude/Longitude: 57.6666, -2.5240
Location: A97, Banff, Aberdeenshire AB45 1DS
Locality: Banff
County: Aberdeenshire
Country: Scotland
Postcode: AB45 1DS
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Listing Text
Thomas Mackenzie, Elgin, l851-4. Italianate, tall 2-storey, symmetrical 5-bay building to Castle Street with wide return bay
and lower, narrower 2-storey, 3-bay wing to Seafield Street. Dark whinstone with constrasting polished sandstone ashlar dressings and margins.
SEAFIELD STREET FRONTAGE: ground floor with centre door and flanking 3-bay shops; shop windows of original size with pilastered jambs to centre doors and flanking windows. Centre Roman doric pilastered and columned doorpiece with double-leaf panelled door. Tall lst floor with 5 long pedimented and pilastered windows with unusual queen-head capitals; each window fronted by balustered aprons linked by deep corniced bandcourse; horizontal glazing to 12-pane timber sash and case
glazing; plate glass in shop windows. Modillioned eaves; rusticated quoins; paired gable wallhead corniced stacks, each paired linked by 3-arched arcade.
Hall linked at S with No 29 Castle Street by tall round-headed arch with balustraded cornice.
SEAFIELD STREET: return bay of hall lits in ground floor by 3 windows with 8-pane glazing and by large lst floor Corinthian pilastered tripartite with shell motif over centre light; horizontal glazing.
2 SEAFIELD STREET: slightly set back 2-storey, 3-bay wing to Town Hall. Materials as hall; centre entrance with plain panelled double-leaf door, 3 long panelled aproned lst floor windows; timber sash and case glazing as return gable of Town Hall with 2 lower panes blocked, horizontal 12-pane in lst floor windows. Quoins, long and short detailing to windows; wallhead cornice; rear wallhead corniced stack; piended slate roof.
INTERIOR: Doric columned screened entrance hall (4 columns) leading to wide imperial staircase with painted ashlar balustered balustrade. lst floor hall takes up entire 5-bay frontage; coffered ceiling supported by 6 pairs draped female figures, each figure clasping laurel wreath; corniced and canopied pilastered doorpiece; large N pilastered tripartite with composite capitals and egg and dart detailing. Later ('1930s) heavy polished red granite chimneypiece.
2 smaller lst floor rooms each with plain grey marble chimneypiece.
References:
ABERDEEN JOURNAL, Sept 10, 1851. BUILDER, Nov 18, 1854. Banff Preservation Society, ROYAL AND ANCIENT BANFF (1975). Charles McKean, BANFF AND BUCHAN, AN ILLUSTRATED ARCHITECTURAL GUIDE (l990), pp 24-5.
Notes:
Built as St Andrew's Lodge of Masons hall.
Source: Historic Scotland
Listed building text is © Crown Copyright. Reproduced under licence: PSI Click-use licence number C2008002006.