Old Lerwick Town Hall

[islandhopper]

... where was it?

 

Or more precisly: Where was the "water-stair" which was refered to by the young R L Stevenson when he said, speaking in 1869 ... we returned again to the water-stair beside the town-hall and waved a handkerchief for the gig ... and after he had compared his findings with the account by Walter Scott (1814) and then stated that there was still no landing stage in Lerwick (for public use) ...

[Ghostrider]

I have no idea, I've never heard of any previous "Town Hall", but then again I'm no Lerwegian, so why would I care.

 

The Tollbooth would be a suspect though I would think. It might be worth contacting the folk who do the guided history walks on the street and lanes, Island Tours aren't they, or something similar?? Chances are if there's any record of a previous Town Hall, they'll have come across it during research for what they do.

[Pooks]

Damn you and your tricky questions. I now have a need to know! I can find no reference to an earlier Town Hall but surely there must have been one. A few buildings come to mind but I am unsure as to when they were built. I presume the previous Town Hall was in a pretty poor state/unsuitable for its use before work on a new one was commissioned. Might be about time I paid Grandmidder a visit!

[Heimdal]

In the 'Handbook to the Lerwick Town Hall' revised by T M Y Manson and G Robertson in 1952 from the original by Sheriff Rampini it states...

 

"Before 1882, when the present Town Hall was built, the only place available for public meetings and entertainment was a disused church, while the Magistrates' Courts and Town Council meetings were held in a room of what had previously been the old Parish Kirk. The Town Clerk had no office, and there was no place in which to keep the municipal records."

 

So RLS must have got it wrong somewhere.

There used to be a burn running all the way down Mounthooly Street before it was covered in. I can remember a cobbled section up the middle which marked it. Could that have been his 'water stair' ?

[Ghostrider]

^^^ Any idea what building was referred to as the old Parish Kirk, or roughly where it was sited, if it no longer exists?

 

Could it be possible that such a building, if being used for "Town Hall-ish" type duties was commonly referred to as the "Town Hall", even if not officially titled as such.

 

Of course, if you follow on with the theory that it was an unofficial title, it brings in the equal possibility that it could refer to almost any popular gathering or meeting place, given the habit many people have of giving strait-laced and officious things very seedy unofficial names, and vice versa.

[islandhopper]

THX ...

 

What I have found so far is a story about the shipsbell of the Drottningen af Swerige which remaind in Shetland and was later used as a churchbell. This article by a Danish historian mentions a "stadhuset" (=Town Hall) - so refered to by Danish Eastindiamen - built in 1767.

 

That said stadhuset - that is clear from the context - is nothing else but the 18th century "Toll Booth" which served in many functions as "former town jail ("Nicol's Hotel" in the second half of the 19th century = "Johnnie Brood da Prison Door", the door of John Gaudi's reel), customs house and post office."

 

And that it most possibly the place were Sheriff Erskine, who accompanied Walter Scott and Stevenson's grandfather, sat in court when in Shetland - so there was probably one bigger room in the building suitable for some kind of meetings.

 

Anyway: Taking the Toll Booth with its various functions as the "old Town Hall" and putting it together with the Mounthooly burn it seems to be more and more clearer that the said solid landing place formerly known as the water-stair is probably somewhere under and used as foundation for the Victoria Pier which appears just 2 years after Stevenson's account as the first bigger pier development in the 1871 OS maps.

[Tom]

It might be worth contacting the folk who do the guided history walks on the street and lanes, Island Tours aren't they, or something similar??

 

Yup - Elma and Doug are lovely, and they'd know - http://www.island-trails.co.uk/contact.htm

[islandhopper]

thx a lot @ all ...

 

I think I figured it out:

The "old town hall" so called by Scott and Stevenson and other visitors of the 19th century is nothing else but the "new town-house", so called by Low in 1774:

"The most remarkable building is a new Town-House, a neat fabrick with a small spire, but no clock. Here the Sheriff or Steward substitute holds his courts, and under it is the common Prison."

 

It is the Toll Booth, finnished just a few years before Lows visit. More about Low here: http://www.shetlopedia.com/George_Low

 

The water stairs were next to it and must be under Victoria pier today. All 19th century references to the stairs are quite negative comments except one: Christian Ployen, then the Danish Governor in the Faeroe, described them in 1839 as a flight of stairs of hewn stone nicely constructed, which at once gives one a pleasant notion of the town ...

[islandhopper]

Correction:

A drawing from 1850 makes it absolutely clear showing the waterstairs in front of a then Lodeberrie right in the southwest corner of what is now the small boat harbour - the original stairs now under pavement of the breakwater ...

[Ghostrider]

^^^ I assume then that they were accessed by the short but wideish lane that runs between the Tolbooth and the Queens then?

 

I wonder if they were purposely buried by the later developments, or if they suffered damage during that storm that affected some of the nearby waterfront?

[islandhopper]

... looks like that.

Have a look here - not the best of quality but absolutely in accordance with all accounts ...

http://www.shetlopedia.com/Image:PicWaterStair.jpg

[Ghostrider]

It takes a minute to find your bearings on that image, Lerwick certainly has grown a lot in 150+ years.

 

It would appear though that the stairs may not have survived much beyond the time that drawing was done though, as by the 1890's they seem to already have been buried beneath developments and a fresh set of concrete?? ones installed, which are referred to as "Hay's Steps".

 

http://photos.shetland-museum.org.uk/index.php?a=wordsearch&s=item&key=WczoxNjoiTGVyd2ljayB0b2xib290aCI7&pg=5

 

There's confirmation though that the "Old Town Hall" was indeed the Tollbooth here:

 

It [Lerwick Town Hall] sits on the high point of the town and replaced the tolbooth located at the seafront. It was paid for by the sale of 2000 shares at £2 each.

 

http://photos.shetland-museum.org.uk/index.php?a=wordsearch&s=item&key=Wczo4OiJUb2xib290aCI7&pg=35

[islandhopper]

@Ghostrider:

 

YABBAHDABBAHDOEEE!!!

 

I was convinced of the idea and I "knew" there must be something mentioned somewhere ...

but sometimes I have to look for my bread, the butter and the saussage going along with it ... and not the right words for google ...

 

THX a lot for your help.

 

@Shetlink admins:

What's about installing a Shetlopedia newsgroup similar to the ShetlandLife newsgroup on Shetlink???

 

Looking from outside only I am sure that a lot of individual probs regarding the idea of a Shetland encyclopedia could be cleared via this way which otherwise might not fit into other subjects/threads of ShetLink.

 

Just a private idea of an individual less than a soothmoother ...

[Ghostrider]

^^^ You're welcome. The Town Hall information was come by very much by accident, I knew the Museum photo collection contained images showing the storm damage to the seafront at what is now the back of the Post Office, and was curious if any of them showed the waterfront as far along as where the water stair was. Unfortunately the collection has been offline for several weeks and was still down when I first tried, but was back last night when I just tried again on an offchance.

 

Unfortunately the images I had in mind all fall short of where the stairs would have been, but once on the site one thing led to another....

 

A dedicated area on Shetlink for Shetlopedia questions/information requests etc sounds like a good idea, it would potentially open up input from a sizeable pool of knowledge. Particularly from anyone who either doesn't have the time and/or the inclination to actually add the information to Shetlopedia themselves but would leave a quick note on Shetlink in passing, or those who maybe only know a small amount of information on a given subject, which alone isn't particularly helpful, but when added to the contributions of others helps round out a fuller picture.

[islandhopper]

... it could have been so easy ...

 

Lerwick's Old T'''booth is a Scots tolbooth not an English tollbooth ...

... a Scots tolbooth is nothing else but a i) town hall, ii) a jail or prison (very frequently within a town hall)

 

Following Ghostrider's pic I found that the museum's website picture gallery uses both spellings with more than 30 tolbooth references and only 2 tollboth spellings which could not be by chance ... from that i suggested that the minorities might be miss-spellings and started to search for tolbooth ...

 

Was a bit of work, but DSL has it quite clearly ... THX for your help.

 

See: http://www.shetlopedia.com/Old_Tolbooth