Scottish
Tolbooths
Most
Scottish burghs had tolbooths. These functioned as the collection
point for market tolls, as the repository of the market weights,
as the town jail and as the home of the burgh council. Many tolbooths
were located close to the Mercat Cross ( market cross. ) Tolbooths
were important buildings and featured prominently on the townscape,
as befitted a building which also functioned as the meeting place
for the sheriff court.
For
many East Coast Scottish towns, being part of Europe was an everyday
reality - a fact given architectural form in the Dutch-influenced
designs of the tolbooths of Crail, Culross and Dunbar, the Kirk
tower of Anstruther Wester, or the wealthy merchants' houses of
George Bruce at Culross or James Dick at Prestonfield in Edinburgh.
There are signs of the great wealth accumulated at this time all
over Scotlands East Coast.
The
trade in goods complemented the trade in ideas encouraged during
the Renaissance period, and ensured that Scotland kept abreast
of the latest developments in a rapidly evolving and increasingly
cosmopolitan Europe.
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