Tolbooth ruin

Image: © kim traynor Taken: 20 Jun 2013

The tolbooth was erected in the late 16th century and the belfry tower was added in the following century. By 1792, although its courtroom was still in use, it was described as "a heap of ruins and a nuisance to the public" and partly demolished in 1822. The clock was added to the surviving tower in 1865. Around 1800 the Sheriff Court moved to Alloa and the tolbooth ceased to be a place of public punishment. A plaque on the building describes the unusual punishment meted out to Robert Livingstone from Crook of Devon, who was convicted of stealing three sheep in 1699. He was sentenced, "to be stripped naked of his clothes and scourged by the hand of the hangman through the whole town of Clackmannan with one of the sheep's heads and four feet hanging about his neck, and thereafter to be banished out of the said shire."

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