[2] It was designed by James Thomson in the Renaissance style, built in brick with a rendered finish and sandstone ashlar dressings, and was completed later in 1873.

[3][4][5] The design involved an asymmetrical main frontage with five bays facing onto the High Street; the left-hand section of three bays, which was gabled, featured a central archway with a keystone on the ground floor, a pair of segmental transomed casement windows flanked by square headed transomed casement windows on the first floor, and a single round headed casement window in the gable.

The fourth bay from the left featured a porch, formed by a pair of brick pillars supporting an entablature with a small central pediment and finials, on the ground floor, and a single casement window surmounted by a shaped pediment on the first floor.

Internally, the principal room was a large assembly hall designed for concerts and theatrical performances.

[7] A war memorial, designed by William Kelly in the form of an obelisk surmounted by four columns and a pyramid-shaped roof, which was intended to commemorate the lives of local service personnel who had died in the First World War, was unveiled in front of the town hall by Colonel James Burnett in August 1923.