The town’s original municipal building was the Old Toolbooth – a primitive affair, with a thatched roof and a barn-like interior, that stood on the site of the current Town Hall. Sold to the Burgh by William Scott of Horsleyhill in 1657, it was rebuilt in c.1694. Farmers paid their fees here on market days and it was also where goods were weighed. The Tollbooth was also used as a local court house and contained a small jail known as the ‘Rogue’s Hole’, which was partly below ground level. A lock from a jail cell door was salvaged during its demolition and can be found on display in Wilton Lodge Museum. 
The Old Tollbooth was replaced in c.1781 with Hawick Town House, which had a tall steeple and an outside staircase. It incorporated a bell to complement the one at Saint Mary’s Kirk, which was once used to call the nightly curfew at 8pm. The Duke of Buccleuch contributed £100 to the cost of the building, plus half the cost of paving the surrounding streets.
A public well, with its source at Sclidder Springs, was opened in 1797 beside the building.There were considerable additions to the steeple in 1806 and a clock was inserted by 1809 along with a weather vane. The door in the steeple at the first floor level, with its projecting ledge, was known as the ‘Oyes door’ and was used for the reading of proclamations – similar to the balcony in its replacement. The ground floor on the Cross Wynd side had open arches, which were closed at night with iron gates. This was the location for the town’s meal and butter markets, whilst the main Council Chambers were upstairs. The building was demolished during 1884 to make way for the Town Hall we know today.
Highly prominent architect James Campbell Walker won a commission for the new Town Hall in a competition of 1883, and his plans were executed by builders John and William Marshall at a cost of £16,000 between 1884 and 1886. Like Dunfermline Town Hall – also designed by Campbell Walker in 1875 – it is in a Franco-Scottish style. The memorial stone was laid by the Duchess of Buccleuch.
It originally housed a police station as well as municipal offices; indeed a few cells remain along a corridor towards the rear of the building. The former prisoners’ exercise yard (at a lower level than the surrounding ground) once stretched beyond the rear of the property and was built over with the foundations of the new Town Hall. An archway on the side of the building which faces onto Cross Wynd was once the entrance to the Burgh Police Station.
It closed in 1964, when a purpose built Divisional Headquarters was opened at Wilton Hill. The lower part of the entrance was bricked up with stonework to match the rest of the building. Even today, Cross Wynd is still referred to as Policeman’s Brae.
Part of the old station was beneath street level and was prepared as a Cold War bunker from which emergency services could operate in a crisis. Surprisingly this remained its primary function until the early 1990s and the emergency generator remains in-situ. The lesser function hall was added in the late 1950s. The main function room has a false ceiling concealing the original plaster work of the original basket-arched roof, which is still visible from the stage.
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