[2] The building was designed by John Smith in a mix of Tudor and neoclassical styles, built in ashlar stone at a cost of £2,000 and was completed in 1816.

[1][3][4] The design involved an asymmetrical main frontage with a hall block of four bays and a tower facing onto Bridge Street; on the ground floor of the hall block there was a row of four round-headed openings forming an arcade, which was originally open and provided a covered market,[4] in a similar style to John Baxter's Peterhead Town House.

Its design was similar to that of William Robertson's tolbooth in Forres, and its tower and spire were inspired by 16th-century Scots tollbooths.

[1] A war memorial, in the form of a six-sided granite column surmounted by a cross and which was intended to commemorate the lives of local service personnel who had died in the First World War, was unveiled outside the town house by Captain Robert Charles Penny Philp MC on 25 August 1920.

[8] The unitary authority for the area, Aberdeenshire Council, held a review of conservation area issues in the village during 2009; it reported back on the issues found, which included a proposal to convert the town house into a community hub, at a meeting in the building on 20 January 2010.