Brechin Mechanics' Institute opened in 1839. The building was funded by the first Lord Panmure to house schools for local children and to provide informal education for adults in the form of lectures, exhibitions and concerts. The building is now run by the Brechin Mechanics' Institute Trust Management Committee. Its halls and rooms are used for a wide range of social, educational and cultural events. The upper hall houses a display of portraits of influential local citizens and John Phillip's nineteenth-century painting of Robert the Bruce on the Eve of Bannockburn, one of Lord Panmure's early gifts to the Institute.