Caisteal Inbhir Nis / Inverness Castle a Preliminary

Caisteal Inbhir Nis / Inverness castle

A preliminary historical account

Dr Aonghus MacKechnie Historic Scotland 5 May 2015

Frontispiece: undated drawing, published probably when the 1830s courthouse was being celebrated and new, and the 1840s prison yet to be built. The kilted piper indicates the new castle was to be considered in the setting of Romantic-age unionist Highlands. The accuracy of the drawing of the old castle is difficult to judge, but that it is described as blown up by ‘the rebels’ – ie, ‘bad guys’ – also matches the ideology of the time, when efforts to build a commemorative centenary memorial at Culloden Battlefield (1846) could not be funded, a sense of collective awkwardness still in circulation over the role of the Highlands in having challenged the status quo by armed insurrection – rather omitting the point that Highland soldiers stood too on the government side. By contrast the Town Council in 1858 viewed with approval the intended and politically-benign commemoration of non-Gael Robert Burns’ birth (1759).

Inverness Castle : preliminary historical account1

‘This castle hath a pleasant seat: the air nimbly and sweetly recommends itself unto our gentle senses’ William Shakespeare, Macbeth2

‘That it is expedient and necessary that these evils [of imprisoning young petty offenders with criminals] and inconveniences be remedied by the erection of a new Court House and Gaol, with a separate House of Correction, according to such plan and in such situation as shall afford more becoming accommodation for the Courts of Justice, and shall ensure not merely the security of prisoners, but that due attention to their health and morals which Justice, Humanity and good Policy equally require.’3 Inverness-shire Commissioners of Supply, 1830

Summary

Inverness Castle comprises two 19th century castellated buildings – an 1830s courthouse and an 1840s prison – built on the site of the predecessor castle and Hanoverian barracks which were blown up by Jacobites in 1746. It occupies a prominent height above the River Ness, in the heart of the city, and is easily Inverness’s most dominant structure. Being one of the most important historic buildings in the Highlands it is listed category A, meaning it is of national or more than national importance.

The burgh

Inverness developed in the standard way of many old Scots burghs, having an early mediaeval religious centre (here, the parish kirk), a seat of corresponding secular authority (the castle) and a settlement. The cross-roads of modern day Church Street (which connects castle and kirk) and Bridge Street / High Street (leading to the river crossing) developed from that early layout.4

The site of Inverness Castle has been claimed to have been that of an early medieval royal centre. Such sites were sometimes characterised by a prominent hill on which the royal settlement was placed, rising from surrounding flat land. Similar sites include, say, Edinburgh (which developed into a city), or Dunadd in onetime Dalriada (which by contrast became abandoned, and returned to agriculture). In the

1 The purpose of this document is simply to provide a background outline history to Inverness Castle for the purpose of the Working Group which was set up in late 2014 to consider the Castle’s future. 2 Spoken by King Duncan before Macbeth’s castle, which in the 19th century was sometimes claimed as that of Inverness (Macbeth, Act I, Scene VI). See for instance Colonel J Graham, ‘Notice respecting Macbeth’s Castle at Inverness’, Archaeologia Scotica (1831), vol. 3, pp. 230-233 (paper read 1823); also John Anderson, ‘On the Site of Macbeth’s Castle at Inverness’, in ibid, pp. 234-244 (paper read 1828). 3 The Highland Council, Highland Archive Service [henceforth HAS], Minutes of the Inverness-shire Commissioners of Supply, DI/1/1/7, p. 373. 4 For an archaeological overview of Inverness see David Perry, ‘Inverness: an historical and archaeological review’, in Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, vol. 128 (1998), pp. 831-857; the architecture is described in John Gifford, The Buildings of Scotland: Highland and Islands (Yale University Press: New Haven, 1992), pp. 182-208.

19th century, Inverness was claimed and debated as MacBeth’s Castle, and as the residence before then of Brude, the Pictish king whom St Columba met. It featured prominently over centuries in both politics and warfare, including the Wars of Independence. Local placenames such as ‘The Crown’ (sometimes claimed as the ‘original’ castle site), ‘Kingsmills’, and possibly ‘Barnhill’, may also relate to the earlier existence of the Castle.

Inverness had had a royal castle since the 12th century, and in the early modern period it came to be a residence of the Dukes of Gordon who remained its hereditary keepers. The castle survived or recovered from the Montrose Wars and years of English military occupation (1640s-1660) and had latterly a big and lavish 5-storey residential tower, and interiors (it possibly had a top-floor north-facing gallery which would be decorated) painted by Italian artists but which were destroyed in 1688-9. This was when James VII / II, the last Stuart king, was replaced on the throne by William and Mary, sparking civil war – pro-James Stuart, or ‘Jacobite’, versus the new government – the castle then occupied by government / anti-Jacobite soldiers. It was probably then too that the castle was abandoned permanently as a domestic lordly residence and its function changed to that of a fort – balancing that at Fort William at the opposite terminal of the Great Glen, and which was built by the new government over several years from 1689.

Concerning Inverness Castle, in 1690, the military engineer

[Theodore] Dury [was instructed by the Privy Council] to goe with all expedition to Inverness and make a regular draught [=design, plan] of the fortificatione necessary to be made ther, and they ordain … Sir Thomas Livingstoune upon returne of the said draught to make calculation and estimatione of the expenses and charge which these fortifications may coast and report ane account thereof to the Councill.

500 spades and shovels, 200 pickaxes and 200 wheelbarrows were all to be sent there for work to commence.5

In the British period, the castle was captured by MacKenzies in the Rising of 1715. It probably had by then angular renaissance-style fortifications – possibly Durie’s work of 1689 – for by 1719 some existed and were in a poor state, suggesting either a lengthy neglect or deliberate assault. These fortifications were probably enhanced, and around 1730 (according to the National Library’s catalogue) it was fortified massively as an anti-Jacobite / pro-union military base and barracks, and re-named Fort George, maybe at the same time, in honour of the king. In 1746 it was blown up by Jacobites, one of their last military actions in the warfare of 1745-46. The site was thereafter neglected, used as an illicit free-stone quarry, and eventually tidied up

5 It is unclear whether this order concerned the castle, town, or both (Register of the Privy Council, third series, vol. 15, p. 562). As was done in 1646, during the Montrose wars, the town was to be made a fortification. Colonel Cunningham was recorded shortly afterwards as awaiting an engineer to ‘designe and compleatt’ that work; ‘order [having been] given for pallasading Inverness and forming a counterscarp about it, the present trench [possibly a relict of the 1640s Montrose campaign] being of no defence against any knowing enemy, …the said pallasades [to] be cut in a wood three myles from the toun belonging to Borlum McIntosh’ (ibid., p. 565). For the Montrose-period fortification of the town see William MacKay (ed.), Chronicles of the Frasers: the Wardlaw Manuscript [etc], Scottish History Society, vol. xlvii (1905), p. 287. 4

after the old castle’s tower collapsed in 1790; for the castle’s military function had been replaced by the present Fort George at nearby Ardersier (identified as early as 1746 as the preferred successor site). Thus the Inverness castle site was militarily obsolete (it was overlooked from the Crown, and so vulnerable always to artillery); it was prestigious, unused, and therefore a clear development opportunity by the early 19th century.6

The project drivers and the architects

The idea of a new courthouse and jail was being discussed by at least the 1810s, but the prime initiative for the project being carried into execution came from advocate William Fraser Tytler (1777-1853). He was a Commissioner of Supply, a sheriff depute and sometimes convenor of Inverness-shire, son of the laird of Woodhouselee and of Anne Fraser of the Jacobite Balnain family, and brother of the famous historian Patrick Fraser Tytler. Thus Tytler had strong local connections, and as a landowner, was a Commissioner of Supply. In 1831, as Mandatory of the Gaol and Court House Committee, he urged the Town Council to support the idea; this would be the ‘Castle of Inverness’, and he argued the project’s worth ‘even from a consideration of the distinguished Ornament which it promises to add to the Capital of the Highlands’. As we will see, the promise of the castle site had already been secured which, added Tytler, was ‘considered by Mr [William] Burn Architect of Edinburgh and other competent judges as a most eligible site, …[while]… a drawing of these buildings had been prepared…[and]…a Bill was intended to be brought into Parliament to authorise’ the project.7

But how did the project come to be? One answer would be to point out that this was the Age of Improvement, new roads and bridges were being built throughout the country, the old tolbooths were being superseded by purpose-built courthouses and prisons as seats of justice; civic Inverness was still asserting its recovered status in the wake of the 1745-46 war and amid continuing military presence – for example, with a new High Church (1769-72), academy (1788-92), new town steeple (1789-92) and so on, and prestigious architects sometimes called in to produce appropriately sophisticated architecture. In like vein, a second Ness Bridge had been built at Merkinch, and when it was deemed unsafe in 1823 the Provost was tasked with consulting the greatest engineer they could find – Thomas Telford – on the option of a fashionable, innovative and showpiece new iron bridge as its replacement. Telford (1757-1834) was by then ‘the unchallenged head’ of the engineering profession.8 That intended (but unexecuted) new ornament to the town was to be designed by the ‘signature’ name of the day.9 So it was also with the Courthouse and Jail. A prestigious designer was in each case required to meet the burgh’s image of itself.

6 A collection of military plans / drawings is held by the National Library of Scotland, accessible online at: http://maps.nls.uk/military/placename.cfm?keyword=Inverness. 7 HAS, Inverness Town Council Minutes, B1/1/1/15, pp. 445-531. 8 The quote is from Howard Colvin, A Biographical Dictionary of British Architects 4th ed. (Yale University Press: New Haven, 2008) p. 1032. 9 The bridge at Merkinch was of timber, and described still as ‘new’ in 1823. So the fact it had not lasted well maybe helped inspire the idea of exploring an iron option. The Town Council Minutes record that ‘This gentleman [ie, Telford] recommended a Stone Bridge, with five cast-iron arches, and he was to have furnished a plan and estimate of the Expense which was not done…’ (HAS, Inverness Town Council Minutes, BI/1/1/15, pp. 700-701). 5

But more directly, the existing courthouse provision within Inverness was deficient – a fact judges on the circuit courts had complained about for years, as was reported to the meeting of the Inverness-shire Commissioners of Supply in 1818. There was a

want of proper accommodation for the jury, both while in court and when inclosed, as well as the personal inconvenience which the judges themselves are subjected to from the narrowness and confinement of the bench, and the want of any room communicating with it, to which they can retire.10

This was referred to the County Committee ‘to procure a plan and Estimate of the necessary repairs’ – they being allowed £150 to improve the existing courthouse.11 But little seems to have been done then. Three years later, in 1821:

The Convenor brought under the notice of the Meeting the present state of the Court House & Gaol of Inverness – The Judges on Circuit on this last occasion reiterated the [‘usual’ deleted, ‘former’ inserted] complaints of the want of accommodation for the Criminal Courts of Justice in this place – which they said was a reproach to the County – there being no Court House so inadequate to its purposes as that of Inverness in any considerable town in Scotland – a Record Room is also required – which, in the event of a new Gaol and Courthouse being built, would cost little additional expense – The Convenor therefore recommended this matter to the consideration of the meeting – … the Convenor [was directed] to correspond with the Sheriffs of the Counties connected with this Circuit to ascertain what has been done in other Counties where new Buildings for the same purposes have been erected – and to obtain a Plan and Estimate to be laid before the Michaelmas Head Court – In the mean time the Meeting authorize Mr [ - ] as sheriff Clerk and Clerk of Supply to purchase an Iron Safe for the preservation of the more important Deeds and Papers under his Charge.12

A new courthouse was not just for the sheriff court but it housed the circuit Court of Justiciary which visited twice a year – a visit full of ceremonial reflecting the standing of the town and county – judge, lawyers, town and county, went in procession from the town to the courthouse. So the embarrassment caused to the town and Town Council might be real enough.

That October (ie, 1821), the Convenor (Rt Hon Charles Grant, younger of Waternish, Secretary for Ireland) reported

he had by correspondence obtained various information from the Counties of Aberdeen and Perth on that subject – had visited and examined along with Mr Burns Architect different situations Contemplated for the proposed building, and furnished Mr Burns with a Note of the requisite accommodations, but that

10 HAS, CI/1/1/6, p. 170. The same meeting heard a similar complaint from Fraser Tytler, the sheriff- substitute at Fort William, and concerning that place – to which £150 for a jail was agreed the next year (ibid, p. 216). 11 HAS, CI/1/1/6, p. 170. 12 HAS, CI/1/1/6, pp. 342-343. The authorisation for the safe was renewed 30 April 1823 (ibid, p. 476). 6

owing to the length of time which these previous inquiries had occupied, it was only this morning that the sketch of a Plan by Mr Burn had reached him.13

The Commissioners now sought means to get others to contribute towards the costs.

Payment

The Commissioners of Supply were essentially the county landowners, and they were responsible for building roads and bridges. The Inverness-shire commissioners in the 1820s were unconvinced they should also pay for the new courthouse and prison. After all, when the then-existing courthouse was built in 1789, it had been funded by the County and Burgh ‘aided by contributions of the other Counties of the District’ (ie, of the court / judges’ circuit).14 Why should things be different only a generation later?

The Commissioners first attempted to get other counties on the same judges’ circuit to contribute towards a new courthouse and prison; they next tried – equally unsuccessfully – to get these counties to contribute towards instead remodelling and enlarging the existing courthouse provision (for which by October 1822 Burn, commissioned in April, had produced another set of drawings).15 It was decided to take no decision but that the committee was ‘to continue their attention to this subject’ and that the drawings ‘lie open for inspection at the Sherriff Clerk’s office’.16 At the meeting of 5 February, 1823 the Commissioners concluded that they liked the plans and the committee was instructed ‘to co-operate with the Magistrates in Carrying these improvements into immediate effect’.17 They therefore approached the Town Council, who produced their own counter-offer, an idea by John MacKenzie of the Burgh Heritors’ Committee.

The Town Council proposed creation of a common fund, burgh and county, used to maintain prisons in the county – at Kingussie, Portree, Fort William or elsewhere. The idea was rejected by the County, and on 3 May 1831 the County voted ‘to proceed…with reference only to a Court House and Public Offices, with lock up Cells for the confinement during Circuit of Prisoners for Trial’.18

Failure to reach agreement on expenditure between burgh and shire resulted in the court house alone being built – the jail was delayed for a decade.

The site

Meanwhile, the Commissioners had found themselves the prize site. At a meeting of 30 April 1831, the Convenor, J A Fraser of Lovat

13 HAS, CI/1/1/6, pp. 362-364. William Burn was frequently – and here, interchangeably – known too as ‘Burns’. For Grant, see: http://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1820- 1832/member/grant-charles-1778-1866 14 HAS, CI/1/1/7, p. 370. 15 CI/1/1/6, pp. 428-429. These drawings are not known to exist. 16 CI/1/1/6, pp. 428-429. 17 CI/1/1/6, p. 468. 18 HAS, DI/1/1/8, pp. 60-71. 7

read to the Meeting a correspondence had by him with His Grace the Duke of Gordon relative to obtaining the castle hill grounds as a Site for the intended building which His Grace agreed to in the handsomest manner to cede on very favourable terms.

On that basis, the committee was instructed to proceed with the site’s acquisition.19

The architects

The architect of the new courthouse, William Burn (1789-1870), was the son of Edinburgh mason and architect Robert Burn (1752-1815) whose most conspicuous design was the Nelson Monument on Edinburgh’s Calton Hill (1807-14). At age 18, William began a 2- / 3-year apprenticeship in London with (later Sir) Robert Smirke (1780-1867), designer of the British Museum (1823-46) and, nearer to home for Invernessians, Perth County Buildings and Courthouse (1815-19) and Kinfauns Castle (1820-22). William Burn became one of the most prestigious architects of his time in Britain, particularly concerning Greek Revival public buildings (such as Edinburgh Academy, 1823) and, from the late 1820s, country houses on both sides of Tweed. He was noted both at the time and by historians thereafter as an innovative house planner, while he had too a key role in both the introduction to Scotland of a neo-Tudor style (at Blairquhan, 1820-4, and Carstairs, 1822-24, following William Wilkins’ prototype at Dalmeny [1814-17]) and in developing the style now known as Scotch Baronial (the castellated style of Ness Walk / Ardross Terrace, across the River, for example), mentioned below.

The prison (North Block / County Buildings / District Court) dates from 1846 and was executed by Edinburgh architect Thomas Brown (‘Thomas Brown II’, 1806-72), who was from 1837 architect to the Prison Board of Scotland. Brown’s architectural thinking was influenced by that of Burn, frequently neo-Tudor or (as at, say, Kilberry House, or Dornoch Jail) Baronial in style, and his specialism in prison design at a time when these were becoming a necessity found him employment throughout the country.

Architectural style – castellation

It could be argued that Scotland’s love of castles never really ended, and when Inveraray Castle was new-built for the Duke of Argyll after 1743, its being in a castellated style signalled that an important long-established family was its owner.20 The so-called ‘castle revival’ was thereafter forefronted by Robert Adam (1728-1792) with a generic castellated formula. But when Sir Walter Scott built his Abbotsford from the 1810s, a new style was already on the way, characterised by specific direct references to old Scottish castles. This as we saw became known as the Scotch Baronial style, and William Burn was one of its chief devisers. Classicism, which had for so long been the only suitable style for important buildings and buildings of authority, was now giving way throughout the country to castellation. Both the

19 HAS, DI/1/1/7, pp. 431-2. 20 The clearest 19th cenury illustration of neo-castellated, or Scotch Baronial, signalling the antiquity and consequent legitimacy of elites was Balmoral Castle. It was built by Prince Albert from 1853, for a monarchy that had ‘re-discovered’ Scotland and which wished to surround itself with appropriate and easily-recognisable instant imagery. 8

Inverness Castle’s buildings belong to that intermediary phase where castles were still more generic in design (each references medieval English models celebrated by contemporary revivalists both sides of the border), and predate the full-blown Scotch Baronial that was to come, and which is seen at the courthouses of Dumfries (1863) and Selkirk (1868), for example.

Inverness, though, was innovative. For either it is the first, or it is an early, example of a purpose-built Scottish courthouse to be designed in a castellated style. Other broadly contemporary courthouses – such as Perth (as we saw, also by Smirke, and orthodox neo-Grecian in style), Dundee (1833) or Lanark (1834-6) – were predictable classical formulae; the point being that classicism denoted a legitimacy and authority derived from what society then regarded the most acclaimed precedents. It may have been the coalescence of changing fashion – which in much of Europe was moving towards an enjoyment of new or re-occupied old castles, and in Scotland, connected to an increasing Ossianic Romanticism – and the wish expressed by Tytler (owner of a Romantic castle at nearby Aldourie) to have a castle once again on this site, that inspired this break from tradition. As Highland capital, the Ossianic theme had a particularly strong validity, while as the putative site of Macbeth’s castle, a neo-medieval formula was particularly apt. And after all, the by then established fashion for castellated mansions (and prisons) already meant that castellation signified secular authority within society. So maybe building castle-like courthouses was a logical next step.

The buildings

Inverness Shire, as we saw, had been working towards a courthouse and prison project, but in 1831 decided to proceed with the courthouse alone. Inverness Town Council agreed then to pay only for a courthouse, meaning the prison element was delayed till the next decade when the new building by Thomas Brown was constructed.21 Burn had perhaps to redesign his original scheme following the decision to proceed with the courthouse alone. The existing drawings are dated 1833, and include a County Committee Room – the bay-windowed room overlooking the Ness (suggesting the Town Council, burgh court, and other civic functions, met still in the tolbooth at the foot of the hill, below).22

The need for a prison was soon, evidently, becoming stronger and Burn produced a design in 1843 entitled ‘Inverness Prisons’ (ie, with male and female wings).23 It was splay-planned and centre-turreted rather like Stirling’s Military Prison of 1845-7 by Thomas Brown Junior – the same architect who was to displace him at Inverness prison. The formula, devised by Jeremy Bentham in 18th century England, was known as ‘Panopticon’ (meaning the entire building could be surveyed inside from one axial viewpoint).

21 HAS, BI/1/1/15, pp. 510, 530-531 and passim. 22 Two sets of drawings are known to exist, denoted ‘Inverness County Buildings’. In the National Archives of scotland, these are catalogued as: RHP 46277-46282 and are available to view electronically; and in RCAHMS, the plans, together with Burn’s rejected design for Inverness prison are catalogued at: IND 5/1-12 / online at http://canmore.rcahms.gov.uk/en/site/98264/prints/inverness+castle+wynd+sheriff+court+house/?sho w=all 23 Referenced at previous footnote. 9

Burn’s scheme was, though, unexecuted. (Was it his scheme of c.1830 represented?) His design was for the same site as that used, and was to have its own high perimeter wall. He explained that in his design:

the South wall…is intended to be 20 foot to the north of the County Buildings [as he then called the Courthouse, reflecting its other use] and the centre line of the one building to be as nearly possible the centre of the other.24

The prison block’s final design, though, engaged with the River and views from the west, rather more than with the site’s geometry and that of the courthouse (as had been the classically-trained Burn’s instinct and intention), giving it a stronger presence and heightened picturesqueness in important views, the contrast with the adjoining courthouse manufacturing a sense of agglomerative layered history and drama as seen at big castles such as Edinburgh or Windsor.

The courthouse

Work was well underway on 13 May 1834 when the County meeting of that date recorded:

much satisfaction that…the Commissioners appointed by Act of Parliament for erecting the Court House of Inverness, that in carrying on the Building, the position of the Court House has been adhered to in strict conformity to the original Plans of Mr Burn, Architect, - now in possession of the Commissioners – for a Court House, Gaol and Bridewell on the site of the Castle of Inverness, and the situation of the two latter, with ample airing grounds, remains open for that purpose.25

The building has four corner towers with intermediary turrets on the flanks and an almost domestic-scaled 2-storeyed front – one tower square, one round, rather like Kinfauns, by – as we saw – Smirke, Burn’s old master. (Kinfauns was Smirke’s only asymmetric castle; and Telford and Smirke’s Carlisle Citadel and County Courts which Burn would know from his apprenticeship days seems another likely reference for Inverness.) The circular tower at the SW corner, intended at first to have two concealed roofslopes draining to a centre gutter, was instructed in 1835 to be made flat and leaded (the other towers have concealed pitched roofs) to ensure people could enjoy the view from there. Building work was far advanced by the time this modification was made. Dr [ - ] Nicol, after conferring with some committee members, passed the instruction to Edinburgh for Burn:

I visited the Round Tower in the Castle…and must pronounce the view the grandest thing in Britain. You may [ ] judge my horror on discovering Raglets [= raggles] in the wall showing the intention of sclating in place of covering with lead & permitting strangers or the lieges to see the finest Panorama any where to be seen.26

24 RCAHMS, Ground floor plan of [intended] prison, C33458. 25 HAS, DI/1/1/8, pp. 200-201. 26 National Records of Scotland, GD128/37/15 10

It would, argued Nicol, be wasteful not to use the space for enjoyment and Burn’s own reputation would be diminished were the change not made. Thus the building was now given the added function of viewing platform, which, prior to the 1840s block being added, was a full 360-degree panorama.

The building has a clear, apprehensible plan, basically symmetrical in the classical (then called ‘Palladian’) tradition. The interior was altered in the postwar period, but – in terms of its structure – only superficially. At the heart of the building is a handsome and essentially unaltered main staircase, lit from high-level windows and enriched by a bust of Tytler which is set prominently and centrally, facing directly towards the main entrance area. An east-west corridor – almost as if on a contemporary country house such as Lews Castle or Balmoral – accessing the spaces front and back, divides the building laterally and terminates with a door at either end. Behind the stairhall, and clasped by corridors and storage spaces, is the main courtroom (‘Court 1’). It is curve-ended / D-shaped and galleried, and has been refurbished; so although the space, and Classical-coffered ceiling, are original, the furnishings are not, save for some re-used curved bench ends and (probably) the Gothic canopy above the judge’s bench. Its windows are all set high, to avoid proceedings being overlooked from outside. The Judge’s room is in the northwest tower, convenient for the bench. Some record storage spaces (several were provided in to the tower upper levels) were from the outset fireproofed, with stone-vaulted ceilings and iron doors. The original entrance hall, as wide as the stairhall from which it was separated originally by an open screen, has been enclosed to create a second courtroom. Its original ceiling and other ornament, which is now concealed by modern fascias, is likely to be intact or largely so. The original Sheriff Clerk’s Office which filled the identical space above has also been sub-divided.27 Iron beams help carry the roof above.

If Inverness’s castellation contrasted with the classicism of its contemporaries, its interior was far more in accord with them. The ceilings of the courtroom and stairhall, for example, are (like Perth Courthouse) Greek revival in style, while twinned classical pilasters rather than castellated gothic details ornament the entrance hall screen.

The new courthouse was in use by April 1838 when the Commissioners considered it

expedient for the Convenience of the public, and for the safe custody of the Records of the Particular Register of Sasines kept in this place for the Shires of Inverness, Ross and Cromarty, Sutherland and Caithness, that these Records should be removed into the fire proof apartment in the castle now prepared and ready to be fitted up as a Record Room. [The Commissioners were to]…request Mr Aeneas McIntosh as the Keeper of these Records to remove the same into, and to occupy and possess as a Record office the apartment in question at such reasonable rent as may be agreed upon, and failing Mr McIntosh giving compliance with that request, that the Commissioners be instructed to apply to the Lord Register or to Government

27 No photographs of the Courthouse interior are included below due to security policies. 11

in order to obtain the Removal of the said Records, and the Keeping thereof within the Castle of Inverness.28

And now there was a concern to protect their new building:

The meeting Remit to the Castle Commissioners to adopt such measures as they may consider necessary to vindicate the Rights of the County by resisting Encroachments upon the Castlehill, either by Mr Alexander Anderson or others.29

While the final touches were now to take place:

The Meeting authorise Mr Colquhoun to order and provide at the expense of the County such furniture as is necessary for the Court House.30

Debts and landscaping

These were two linked considerations. On 29 April 1836, the Commissioners committee appointed for erecting and maintaining the courthouse

recommended that a sum be voted by the General Meeting, to be placed at the disposal of the castle Buildings Commissioners, for the purpose of levelling and improving the grounds in the vicinity of the Buildings. – It is also recommended that the General Meeting should empower the Commissioners to agree with the Magistrates of Inverness, and with the District Road Trustees, for the Improvement of the Castle Hill Grounds, and the roads in their neighbourhood.31

The next day, £150 was allocated for the purpose.32 However: the Commissioners’ courthouse committee had run up debts – almost £1,000. This fell to the County to pay, and a loan was to be sought with an annual assessment made of £200, ‘which assessment should come in place of the Assessment of One hundred and fifty pounds…now levied for the improvement of the Castlehill grounds’.33

Two years later, on 30 April 1838, the County again considered its debts for the Castle – reduced by then to just over £324

and of the additional sum requisite for forming parapets, enclosures and terraces in front of the Building, amounting according to Estimates to about Five hundred pounds…and that the sum of Eight hundred pounds would be necessary and sufficient to discharge the said debt, and for executing the

28 HAS, DI/1/1/8, pp. 390, 393. 29 DI/1/1/8, p. 393. 30 DI/1/1/8, p. 393. 31 DI/1/1/8, pp. 256-257. 32 DI/1/1/8, p. 273. The minutes note: ‘The Mackintosh begged leave to record his dissent’. 33 DI/1/1/8, pp. 311, 322. In 1838, there was still a will ‘for the improvement and extension of the Castlehill and roads in the vicinity thereof’ (ibid, p. 384). 12

Plans of Mr Burn in regard to the Enclosures, Gates and Parapets around the Building.34

Were Burn’s plans indeed implemented, then the work was overseen by the engineer Joseph Mitchell C.E. (1803-83), as mentioned below. In any event – the grounds were modified, debts paid off. Perhaps the retaining wall on Castle Road belongs to this phase of operations too.

The North Block

This was the 1840s prison. It has a much more dynamic and asymmetric profile than the courthouse and is taller, with square and polygonal thick and thin turrets reaching above one another – several of these again flat-roofed, and intended for enjoying the view. Linking it to the Courthouse on the west, and originally unwindowed or slit- windowed to the riverside, is a drum tower (neo-medieval but also rather like a Martello Tower or blockhouse, and currently used as offices). It, and its linking screen wall (also unwindowed originally, and now reduced in height) emphasises the idea of the whole being one multi-phase castle.

The main prison block’s design as viewed from across the Ness is very picturesque on its west face. However, its other elevations were originally less prominent, intended to have been concealed behind high prison walls; so they are less architecturally distinguished in such views, having ornament emphasised only at the upper levels. (Its south façade is symmetrical and end-towered, not unlike Perth prison where again Brown was involved.)

How did this more Picturesque, or more Romantic, solution come about? The answer was provided by William Fraser Tytler who clarified that the design was not simply that of Brown. First, he explained the problem:

we had three…plans by distinguished architects under our consideration – two by Mr Brown, the architect of the General Board of Prisons of Scotland, and one by Mr William Burn, whose works have established for him a name second to none in the kingdom. Had we, however, adopted either of these three, the effect would have been very different to the eye of taste, from that… which the Castle of Inverness now presents; for the rules of modern prison architecture demanded…that the main building should be entirely surrounded by the boundary wall: hence, in all the three plans, the prison stood in the centre of the plateau, while a wall of fifteen feet surrounded the entire crest of the hill. The effect of this will be readily conceived; the angle at which the building is viewed from the opposite bank of the river being such that only the upper storey would have been visible over the boundary wall. This would have been a sad prostitution of the noble site which nature had furnished to us; but how to overcome the difficulty, without diminishing the necessary security of the prison, was a problem of no easy solution.

34 HAS, DI/1/1/8, pp. 392-3. The subject of ‘Castlehill improvements’ was discussed by the Commissioners of Supply on 2 October 1849 (noted in index [HAS CI/1/7/1], the minute book being lost). 13

The wish to use an elevated site for a prison had been introduced to Scotland with Robert Adam’s 1790s (but demolished) Edinburgh Bridewell Prison on Calton Hill (and is seen too at Stirling, 1845-47). Such prominence given to a prison was a clear warning of the might and authority of the penal justice system. But how could Inverness provide herself with a picturesque solution where function seemed to dictate views would be of a lumpen perimeter wall? The critical, if simple, idea was to push some of the buildings – not the cells; but the governor’s and matron’s apartments, for example – to the site’s edge. Again, Calton Hill was a possible reference point where the likewise castellated 1815 Governor’s House was similarly located – there, latched on to a cliff-edge – to achieve the same purpose and visual impact.

Tytler continued, outlining the solution:

A fourth design was furnished by a member of the County Board, Mr [Thomas] Ogilvy of Corriemony…. Adopting…Mr Brown’s second plan…Mr Ogilvy furnished the design of a building which was finally sanctioned by the Prison Board, and which now so happily overhangs, and is reflected in, our beautiful river; - with no other deviation from his original sketches than the addition of a low angle at the bottom of the principal tower, suggested by the late Sir Thomas Dick Lauder.35

Ogilvy was not an architect, but seemingly a businessman – and he had produced sketches as opposed to architects’ drawings. Acting as client, he re-designed this design of Brown’s meaning much of the credit usually assigned Brown for the final outcome goes in fact to Ogilvy. Evidently, Brown’s initial idea had not been unlike that of Burn – nor of his Stirling prison, likewise, as we noted, on a dramatic site – and maybe was prosaically symmetrical, almost ‘dumped’ on the hilltop. All that being said – it still fell to the architect to articulate Ogilvy’s idea, which had now become his brief for the job; it was almost certainly Brown and not Ogilvie who created the superlative riverside elevation, with its clever and compact assemblage of disparate blocks.

Very major change to this building was, though, to follow. Most obviously, the riverside facades were punched through in different parts by new windows – for originally, there was a stronger sense of blank, medievalising castle walls. The prison yard / perimeter walls are now much-reduced in height, the gate lodge demolished (it was set between the prison and courthouse, on the site’s eastern edge), and the prison building itself has been altered extensively, inside and out, presumably at the same time that the successor prison became operational.

This main prison block is orientated approximately east-west. It extended eastwards from the staff accommodation on the west side, which enjoyed the views across the Ness. Comprising essentially a 3-storey castellated rectangle, the building’s eastern end is treated like an individual towerhouse with a parapeted concealed roof. Most of the windows, on the long south wall in particular, were originally identical, segmental- arched and shallow-depth, with prison bars; for there were cells on all three floors,

35 Inverness Courier 5 July 1849; letter dated 22 June from Tytler in his capacity as Chairman of the Inverness-shire Prison Board. 14

and a full-length spinal corridor on each floor which was evidently top-lit, as some glass floor tiles survive (mostly carpeted over, so more clearly seen from below) whose purpose was to cast light downwards through the corridor floors. The differing plan-depths on the northern side of the spinal corridors confirm that functions on the corridors’ north and south sides were not identical. Space would have been allocated on the north side, for example for the kitchen(s), and maybe a laundry.

To-day, the cells (except at basement level) are largely removed save for some elements of cross-walls, and there is but one original cell window – on the ground floor of the south wall’s east end. It was retained because it lights only a space beneath what now is the main staircase, which was installed to access what now is a courtroom. Most other cell windows have simply had their sills dropped several masonry courses to be made ‘normal’ size, and plugged holes still clearly visible on the external window ingoes (3 on the rybats each side) evidence where bars had once been.

The decision to create a courtroom to fill the NE area’s upper floor (at the head of the staircase) also necessitated major structural change. To make it high-ceilinged meant removing the upper floor, meaning essentially converting 2 storeys to one; while to give it the requisite interior length the west wall of the ‘towerhouse’ had to be removed at this level (above the courtroom the wall is now carried on an inserted steel beam within the loft void). All the big round-arched courtroom windows were also inserted then. They cut through detailing and original prison windows which had to be sacrificed for the changes. (Some of these original windows were paired and round-arched, similar to windows seen elsewhere on the building.)

But when was this work done? There was a re-arrangement of rooms somewhere within Inverness Castle in 1868 (costing £2,000 – of which £800 was for the cabinetmaker).36 More probably, though, and as already indicated, the majority of the works discussed here must comprise the alterations documented in 1904, re- arranging the Jail buildings to become County Offices;37 for the present, successor prison in Duffy Drive known as Porterfield was built 1903 on the lands of Porterfield (the name seemingly another reference to the ancient castle?). That 1904 phase of work was to the designs of the prolific local architectural practice of Ross and Macbeth (Dr Alexander Ross was a prominent figure locally, officer in the Highland Artillery Volunteers, and Provost of Inverness 1889-95).38 Other work was done in 1911 by R J Macbeth.

The prison was possibly also a place of execution. For in 1889, the ‘Fort George murderer’ was sentenced to death, and a scaffold was erected above the southern of the two western towers. In the event, he was though reprieved, the scaffold dismantled.39

36 Inverness Courier 9 July 1868. 37 http://www.scottisharchitects.org.uk/building_full.php?id=200636 38 For Ross, see http://www.scottisharchitects.org.uk/architect_full.php?id=100284; also Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press: Oxford, 2004), vol. 47, pp. 799-800. He was a fellow officer in the Inverness Artillery Volunteers with Kenneth MacDonald, mentioned below – who was Town Clerk when Ross was Provost. A portrait of Ross hangs in the Town House main hall, and a photograph of MacDonald is or was formerly held in the same building. 39 Highland News, 30 March 1889. This reference was given me by historian Dr Malcolm Bangor- Jones. 15

There are secure and prison cell spaces in the basement, beneath the building’s east end where some cell doors and other features also survive. Much of the stonework there is droved (=horizontally-tooled) ashlar and in the character of contemporary prison architecture (Stirling, for example). But other areas survive from earlier construction on the site – in particular, a west-facing blocked round-arched doorway which is unlike anything else in the building and evidently of a different – earlier – date from the 1840s work. This doorway is at the basement’s eastern extremity, set in a wall which (on present survey evidence) appears not to extend upwards to above ground level (ie, it is not part of the prison structure). This could therefore be part of the old castle’s outbuildings, or maybe a fragment of the southern of the two government barracks blocks, or part of an earlier castle on the site – proper analysis needs done to engage with that puzzle.

Associated structures

Enclosing perimeter walls, intended as we saw by Burn and the courthouse builders, were built in 1839 by the engineer Joseph Mitchell.40 He was successor as government Chief Inspector of Highland Roads and Bridges to Thomas Telford and builder of nearby Viewhill – a villa in a similarly historic / revivalist style complete with armorial hall, whose overdoor inscription references Shakespeare’s MacBeth and thus the ancient Inverness Castle.41

At their northwest end, probably as designed by Brown, the walls take the form of intersecting V-pointed ravelins reaching one above another, and they appear there to rest on footings of what may be the early 18th century fortifications. Two of these ravelins have dummy sentinel boxes which also recall ‘real’ military architecture, notably the northern ravelin of Edinburgh Castle. Most likely the smooth landscaping above the Ness was also done then, for the Hanoverian structure was at least partly terraced on that side with fortifications – all now gone – extending to the riverbank.

Castle hill improvements around 1852 included a castellated lodge at the site’s southern end, within a programme pushed forward to a ‘Plan by Joseph Mitchell C[ivil] E[ngineer]’.42 Long-demolished, it was probably a road-widening casualty. Stumps of polygonal gatepiers alone survive near there. The lodge’s construction came about after the Town Council and Castle Commissioners combined a civic tidying-up exercise with a practical requirement

insofar as regards the removal of the present unseemly little building which serves as a Duty House at the [?head] of the Haugh Brae, and for the Substitution in its place of a More tasteful Erection which may serve at once the purpose of a Duty House, and of a Porter’s Lodge for the Entrance to the Castle Hill at that Place.43

40 Inverness Courier 16 January 1839. 41 The same quotation from Macbeth given at the outset of this paper was set above Mitchell’s door at Viewhill, demonstrating both his interest in local history and his connecting his house with the ‘traditional’ Inverness Castle. 42 HAS BI/1/1/20, pp. 527-8. 43 BI/1/1/20, p. 488. 16

In the postwar period, and as noted, high prison walling and turrets at the North were reduced in height, while a gatehouse and gateway between the two buildings, on their east side and securing the prison, were demolished, all probably in order to accommodate car parking. The Castle well was lost sight of until rediscovered in 1909 and enframed proudly in ashlar, while in front of the castle is the famous statue by Andrew Davidson (made 1896-9) of the Jacobite heroine Flora MacDonald’ With her dog at her side to symbolise fidelity, she gazes in the direction her Bonnie Prince landed and left from – he having left the castle behind her, as well as the Jacobite cause and Scotland’s Gaelic world, in tatters.

The courts in history

The Inverness courts and prison featured prominently during the Crofters’ Wars of the 1870s-early 80s which were the people’s challenge to Highland Clearance. It was in this courthouse that Sheriff William Ivory, for example, secured his name in history for his role in opposing crofters’ agitation. It was here too that Inverness-born Kenneth MacDonald, lawyer and Inverness Town Clerk, fought for land reform and crofters’ rights, and here in 1882 he defended the crofters arrested following the ‘Battle of the Braes’.44

The Castle was esteemed as a piece of communal or civic property. For example, military triumph in the Crimean War was celebrated there by placing beside it captured Russian cannon (two were placed, formerly, facing down the esplanade), while the iron cleats formerly on the flagstaff for holding the ropes were ‘taken from the flagstaff of the Tower at Malakoff during the siege of Sevastopol’.45 There were other guns – one captured in 1915 at Loos; some were scrapped in 1941. One cannon survives, now lying neglected in a northwest ravelin.

The Castlehill as a rallying point

Being an open area of common property, the Castlehill was at least once used as a venue for crowd assembly – the function once served by Parliament Close in Edinburgh and served still by George Square in Glasgow.

44 The five accused were imprisoned in Inverness and their trial opened in Inverness courthouse 11 May 1882. See Alexander MacKenzie, History of the Highland Clearances (1883 ed. reprinted Mercat Press: Edinburgh, 1997), pp. 435-489. The sense of an unjust, pro-landlord legal system was highlighted by MacDonald at the outset of the case, in a letter of 1 May 1882 to the Lord Advocate in London: MacDonald referred to the trials of ‘nearly ninety years ago when [Thomas] Muir and his fellow reformers were convicted of sedition’, and claimed ‘The belief of the prisoners is that the object of your order [summary trial in Inverness] is to secure their conviction at all hazards irrespective of their guilt or innocence, and this belief is shared by a growing number of the outside public. It is for you to dispel this misapprehension if it is one’ (ibid, pp. 441-442). MacDonald at other times represented crofters from elsewhere, including those of Skibo, Balblair and Osbisdale, on whom he based an address to the Crofters’ Commission of 1886 (Scottish Highlander, 23 December 1886). The gratitude of some – such as the ‘crofters of the parish of Creich’ – was displayed by their gifting, notwithstanding their scant resources, presents to MacDonald’s daughter Ella on her marriage (Inverness Courier 31 January 1893). 45 The guns came via the War Office, and were placed at the Castle by the Town Council with the agreement of the Castle Commissioners who first required assurance they would not be required to pay anything (HAS BI/1/1/20, pp. 383, 399). The quotation is taken from a letter in National Records of Scotland (GD128/37/15). 17

This was in August 1839, when it was used for an open-air meeting or rally by Chartists (who were campaigners for what we would regard a more just society):

The Chartists seem to be travelling northwards. every town (even in canny Scotland) there are some idle fellows capable of spouting out a given [ ]antity of trashy declamation, and whose chief [ ]ult with the Government is, that they are at the bottom of society instead of being at the top.

Mr Mackenzie, to the surprise of our townsmen, appeared in Inverness on Friday evening, and addressed a number of persons – chiefly young men and women of the humblest class of inhabitants – on the Castle Hill. He appears to be a very young man, raw[?], and uneducated. His speech was delivered in a sing-song manner, and consisted of the usual Chartist topics; it made little or no impression here, and no attempt was made at a collection.46

This civic value of the Castlehill continues to-day – not for rallies, nor for protest, but as the location of the City’s Christmas tree – the equivalent to Glasgow’s George Square, or Edinburgh’s Mound. It remains an important civic place.

Impact on townscape: Ness Bridge

The castle dominates the town – now, city. Does this mean it had an impact on how the town developed? The one obvious point to suggest is that it influenced the design of the (demolished) suspension bridge over the Ness, a structure famous from countless historic views (see plates 3 and 14 below). The 1680s bridge – whose construction was a government-assisted project – had been swept away in the flood of 1849 and its replacement was built 1852-5 when the Castle was but newly-completed.47

The new bridge was provided by the government, which kept control of the process and appears to have appointed its own favoured engineer from England – the

46 Inverness Courier 7 August 1839. Chartism was a working-class-driven movement which argued every man [sic] should have a secret vote for their parliamentary representation. The movement horrified many amongst the landowning classes, was repugnant to Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, and parliament dismissed the Chartists’ arguments at that time. 47 The 1680s bridge was Inverness’s first stone bridge over the River Ness – seven round arches, and a prison in one or more of the spandrels. It was part-funded by the government – MacLeod of Dunvegan is said to have invested in it too – and contracted for by James Smith the elder, mason in Forres. Smith’s son, Master James Smith (c.1645-1731), royal architect 1683-88/9, inspected it in his official capacity in 1682. One of the inscription panels – a very Roman-looking pattern (Smith the younger is believed to have studied in Rome) – is today set in the west gable of the Town House. The footings of some of the original arch pillars are seen still on the riverbed beneath the present bridge (visible from the SW bank). The designer of the 1850s bridge appears to have been James Meadows Rendell (1799-1856) whose name is frequent in the Town Council Minutes, but at a guess it seems likely to have involved Joseph Mitchell, as he was involved in the committees prior to its commencement. Mithcell was a town councillor, and he was at that time favoured by the town for its other engineering works, its bridgework, for embanking the riversides, repairing flood damage of 1849, and for inbringing the water supply (see HAS Town Council Minutes, BI/1/1/19, pp. 200, 246, & passim). Mitchell took legal action against the Town Council for unpaid charges caused by his efforts following the flood, for the Council argued that he was acting as a member of Council and not a professional. That episode concluded with the Town Council approaching the Caledonian Bank in 1859 for an advance of £400 to help them pay to Mitchell (ibid, pp. 113, 121, 368-371 and passim; BI/1/1/21, 3, 10, 13). 18

talented and prestigious J M Rendell (1799-1856). The Town Council wanted the new bridge to be castellated, but lacked the authority to require that – hence the supplicatory tone when in September 1851 it decided to

instruct the Bridge Committee to communicate to Mr Rendel that while the Council have no wish to impede or delay the progress of the work they hope that if found practicable by Mr Rendel a Suspension Bridge with a tower at each end will be granted.48

The idea of castellation was adopted, as well as the wish for a suspension bridge. However, this new bridge was maybe unique in Scotland in that it was a suspension bridge with only one high pylon. That was on the town (east) side.49 On the one hand, this was a piece of engineering display, a clever design. On the other hand, its castellated style seems to have been intended to correspond with that of the Castle, making it a piece of matching townscape, homogenising the place.

The absence of a corresponding western pylon was maybe partly to ensure views of the town and castle were uninterrupted. But more evidently, the positioning of that single pylon, almost like a drawbridge at the entrance to the burgh’s principal thoroughfare, gave the town a medieval city quality on both arrival and departure, as if Inverness was a walled and secure-gated medieval town, and connecting metaphorically to the neo-medieval castle – a sense that would be diminished were there a similar pylon or entrance on the west bank as the Council had envisaged in 1851. The bridge’s design seems to have been a sophisticated piece of neo- medievalising townscape, and to have been dictated in its unusual form by the pre- existence of the Castle and the burgh’s sense of its own history and importance as the capital of the Highlands. 50

Impact on townscape: castellated buildings

Possibly it was another homage to the castle when castellated Scotch Baronial designs were executed for the 1880s-90s development at Ness Walk on the riverbank opposite. The centre arch of the Palace Hotel derives from a specific source –namely, 1590s Fyvie Castle in Aberdeenshire, thus localising it to the historic provincial north. But more important – there seems to be a clear ‘dialogue’ between the Castle and the neo-castellated buildings it faces on Ness Walk. (After all, that development for the Ardross estate was designed by Alexander Ross, whose urban buildings on the River’s east side seem consistently to have adopted styles other than Baronial.)

Conclusion

48 HAS BI/1/1/19, p. 391. 49 The process had been tortuous, with a Parliamentary Bill passed in 1851, but delays thereafter. In September 1855 the Council agreed a motion ‘that they cannot help expressing their extreme regret at the unaccountable and unbusiness like delay which have[sic] occurred in the completion of the Inverness bridge carried on under the auspices of the Government…and that a copy of this resolution be transmitted to the Chancellor of the Exchequer’ (BI/1/1/19, p. 536; BI/1/1/20, p. 224). The formal opening nonetheless took place on 23 August 1855 (A Gerald Pollitt, Historic Inverness (Perth, 1981), pp. 60-62). 50 Historically, Inverness regarded itself semi-officially as the ‘Capital of the Highlands’, as noted above in 1831, and as documented by the Town Council for example in 1855 (BI/1/1/20, p. 239). 19

The grouping of buildings that constitute Inverness Castle is architecturally very distinguished and crucial to determining the character of the city as the capital of the Highlands. Inverness Castle seems likely also to be the biggest historic building in the Highlands, save for Craig Dunain and Fort George, and it is certainly one of the most significant.

The historical significance of the site is also great – its past as well as its present contribution to the standing of the city as the Highlands capital, and its documented past as for example a British Hanoverian garrison that was blown up as an act of war; as well as for the fact that the present buildings were witness to some of the big events in the history of the Highland Clearances and thus of a modernisation process with an international resonance which for many remains a live issue to-day.

Dr Aonghus MacKechnie Historic Scotland 5 May 2015

Acknowledgment: This paper was written at the request of Fergus Ewing, Minister for Energy, Enterprise and Tourism. The following were helpful to me in its compilation: Malcolm Bangor-Jones, Eddie Boyd, Linda Fletcher, Kerry Hawthorne, Leigh Johnston, Donald Mackechnie, Frances MacPherson, Iain Morrison, Debbie Potter, Lorna Steele, Alexa Thomson, Diane Watters.

Note: Plates 1-6 and 14 are from RCAHMS; plates 17-21 from the National Library of Scotland; plates 8, 10-13 from Historic Scotland; and therefore all are crown copyright. Permission to reproduce plate 9 was gifted privately. The frontispiece and plate 15 are author’s copyright.

INVERNESS CASTLE

PLATE 1: MAIN BLOCK: VIEW FROM SOUTH, FLORA MACDONALD STATUE IN FOREGROUND

PLATE 2: VIEW FROM WEST, ACROSS THE RIVER NESS: 1840s BLOCK ON THE LEFT; MAIN COURTHOUSE ON THE RIGHT

PLATE 3: HISTORIC AERIAL VIEW SHOWING RIVER NESS (LEFT), AND (CENTRAL) THE 2 DISTINCT BLOCKS THAT CONSTITUTE INVERNESS CASTLE

Here the esplanade is landscaped, the prison perimeter walls are high (ie, prior to their being reduced in height) with tall turrets and there is a gatehouse between the two buildings securing the prison. The long-gone Castle Street buildings are also shown, as is the former lodge at the picture’s bottom left hand corner.

PLATE 4: HISTORIC VIEW FROM THE NW.

All buildings seen here save the castle have since gone. At the Castle’s north end (left hand side in this view) is seen the originally high prison perimeter walling, while the centre drum and screen wall to its right are both unwindowed, the tower to its left windowed less than now (compare with plate 2). The stair and walkway beneath the castle’s left hand (north) side may originate from the Hanoverian period reconstructions, possibly the northwest- most bastion.

PLATE 5: ORIGINAL GROUND FLOOR PLAN OF COURTHOUSE BY WILLIAM BURN (DATED 17 JULY 1833)

The main courtroom space is seen clearly, clasped by the building’s flanks, its proportions and perimeter corridor as seen to-day. Central on the south front (bottom in this view) is the Entrance Hall (now a courtroom), full width of the staircase from which an open screen separates it. Above the Hall, and part- supported on two concealed iron beams, is the Sheriff Clerk’s Office. The Sheriff’s Room is in the round tower at the southwest corner, the Sheriff Clerk’s Room above it; the bay-windowed room on the left, overlooking the River Ness, was designed as the County Committee Room; and in the northwest square tower (top left in this view) is the Judge’s Room, so placed to enable direct access to the judge’s bench.

PLATE 6: UNEXECUTED DESIGN BY WILLIAM BURN FOR PROPOSED INVERNESS PRISONS (DATED 21 FEBRUARY 1843).

The site proposed was that on which the new prison was ultimately built, ie north of the Courthouse. Burn’s design followed the Panopticon model whereby from one central axial viewpoint the building’s corridors could all be viewed. The male prison was to the left, women’s to the right, and exercise corridors and enclosed yards to their north on either side. A high perimeter wall was intended, with towers and dummy towers (that to left / west was to be a coal shed) and pointed outsets, thus extending the existing castellated picturesqueness of the site while ensuring no external walling was incapable of being seen from inside the prison walls.

PLATE 7: NORTH TOWER, VIEW FROM SW

This view of the 1840s prison was made intentionally more picturesque by the intervention of Thomas Ogilvie of Corriemony. The architect’s intention (compare preceding plate) had been the more predictable option of simply placing the prison central on the allotted site. Ogilvie suggested drawing the staff quarters and other functions to the site’s western edge, above the steep slope down towards the river, for by doing so the site’s dramatic visual potential and castle-like effect could be maximised. Some of the pointed ravelins may relate to the pre-existing fortifications, while the high wall between the main block and round tower (the other prison perimeter walling has been reduced in height) demonstrates the security required of the open area behind.

PLATE 8: NORTH TOWER, SOUTH FAÇADE.

This block was built to contain prison cells and thereafter altered significantly, probably around 1904 when the successor prison became operational and this building was given new uses. Most of the segment-arch windows seen here were originally shallow-depth iron-barred prison cell windows. Only one such window on this facade – seen bottom right in this view – now survives intact, complete with iron bars and iron-framed small-paned glazing. It survives only because its new role in the context of the alterations was to light a storage space underneath the stair which was installed to access the new courtroom. The other segment-arched windows have all had their sills dropped several masonry courses to make them ‘normal’ sized. Patches still seen on the ingoes show where the iron bars were originally and help confirm the interpretation of the building argued for here.

PLATE 9: INVERNESS CASTLE

Historic photograph of Inverness Old Castle. This view details the former prison / North Tower. It shows the original prison cell windows prior to their being enlarged by having their cills dropped. The lower image identifies these windows more clearly. The middle bartizan / turret has gone, demolished when the wall supporting it was reduced in height.

PLATE 10: NORTH TOWER: VIEW FROM NORTHEAST.

In this view of the North Tower, the part nearest the viewer is intended to resemble a castellated towerhouse, while the more distant elements are part of the staff accommodation, composed more asymmetrically to create the picturesque view the castle has when viewed from across the River Ness. The windows on the far left and far right, together with the shorn stepped string course seen central, all suggest that the building was 3-storeyed originally. The high, single round-arched windows were installed probably around 1904 to light the new courtroom whose double-height ceiling meant this part of the building had to became 2-storeyed instead of 3. The low wall glimpsed on the extreme right of this view, part of the old prison wall, used to reach originally as high as where the adjoining turret steps inwards (ie, above ground floor level).

PLATE 11: NORTH TOWER: PROBABLE PRISON CELL DOOR.

This narrow space opening southwards off the main centre corridor seems likely to have been a prison cell doorway originally; for frequently, cell doors were intentionally made particularly narrow for added security.

PLATE 12: NORTH TOWER: WINDOW INGOES ON SOUTH WALL.

The unusually-wide window arches and stub walling may mean this space was originally constructed as prison cells, each cell with a vaulted individual ceiling.

PLATE 13: NORTH TOWER: BLOCKED ROUND-ARCHED DOORWAY IN BASEMENT.

The basement spaces beneath the North Tower are on its western side and accessed from below the western turret. This doorway and wall closes the most distant, most easterly part of these spaces. It faces west.

The doorway’s architecture conflicts with that of the 1840s North Tower in that it is round-arched and its dressed stones are red ashlar (ie, from a different quarry) with either three or four dressed faces as against the pinker stone of the main building whose ashlars have consistently four dressed faces in view. This is clearly therefore part of a predecessor structure incorporated in the 1840s work, and the scale of its ashlars indicates a high status structure; but further analysis is required before any confident suggestions of its origin can be made.

PLATE 14: 1950s AERIAL VIEW OF INVERNESS TAKEN FROM RAF AIRCRAFT

PLATE 15: KENNETH MACDONALD / COINNEACH DOMHNULLACH (1850- 1921), CROFTERS’ LAWYER, AND TOWN CLERK OF INVERNESS

Inverness courthouse and prison featured in the struggle for land reform in the Highlands, and in the ‘Crofter’s Wars’ of 1882-83. Many of the crofters – such as those of Skibo, and those arrested following the ‘Battle of the Braes’ – were represented and defended by Kenneth MacDonald, both in the courtroom of Inverness and elsewhere. His contribution was recognised at the time, for to his pro-crofter friend Alexander MacKenzie, historian of the Clearances, MacDonald was ‘an able advocate of the rights of the Highland people’, and MacDonald featured affectionately as Coinneach Beag (= Wee Kenneth) in her song ‘A’ Chlach’ agus Màiri (= ‘The Stone’ [Clachnacuddin] and Mairi) by Màiri Mhòr nan Oran / Mary MacPherson, today famous for her pro-crofter political songs and activities.

PLATE 16: INVERNESS PRISON: NEWSPAPER SKETCH OF SCAFFOLD

The ‘Fort George murderer’ was sentenced to be hanged but repreived. This 1889 news report makes light of the episode but illustrates (see top right hand corner) a use envisaged then for the prison SW tower as a place of execution. (Compare plate 7.)

PLATE 17: INVERNESS CASTLE: SURVEY OF 1719 BY MILITARY ARCHITECT ANDREWS JELFE

Here the castle (its relationship to the town shown by the inset on the left) has angular renaissance-type fortifications, especially to its north (left hand side in this view), likely to date from the 16th or more probably 17th century. The construction date of the main tower is not known, but it was an unusually massive structure, unusual too in having a twin-pitched / M-shaped roof, the centre scale and platt stair possibly a 17th century intervention. The rank of north-facing top floor openings (top right in this view) were either the gunholes seen on the following image [see PLATE 10], showing that the castle had ceased its function as a residential tower and become military architecture; or, they were windows, suggesting a gallery (like that at Craigston) had once existed there. The oblique wing is difficult to comment on, but appears on some other views of the castle.

PLATE 18: INVERNESS CASTLE / ‘FORT GEORGE’

At some point since the preceding drawing was made in 1719, the castle was re-named ‘Fort George’.

This is an ambitious plan for modernising the castle’s military capacity (undated; suggested to date from c.1730 by National Library of Scotland). The ‘old Castle’ was to be ‘fitted up for the Officers’, twinned barracks blocks for four companies, etc., were to be added.

PLATE 19: INVERNESS CASTLE / ‘FORT GEORGE’

1750 drawing by engineer William Skinner and draughtsman Charles Tarrant entitled ‘Plan of Fort George at Inverness, Shewing its present Condition’.

This shows the devastation caused by the Jacobite assault of 1746. It confirms too that much of the intention shown on the preceding image was executed, including terracing (albeit, rudimentary-looking) above the River Ness and a stone bastion by the riverside.

PLATE 20: INVERNESS CASTLE / ‘FORT GEORGE’

1750 drawing by engineer William Skinner and draughtsman Charles Tarrant entitled ‘Fort George at Inverness’. This view also shows the devastation caused by the Jacobite assault of 1745. It shows the tower was left standing, but gutted, and the western (on this view, bottom right hand) barracks block largely gone. The regular window-bay spacing on the tower front, like the arrangement of superimposed identical spaces, indicates that the building had ceased to be a residential tower. The absence of gables, and an unusual rank of gunholes in the tower’s parapets, suggest a flat roof had been created as a shooting gallery. This was the tower in its final iteration prior to its collapse in 1790 and removal.

PLATE 21: INVERNESS CASTLE / ‘FORT GEORGE’

Drawing of Inverness Old Castle by Jean Henri Bastide (undated; National Library of Scotland catalogue says c.1725). The military fortifications shown are slight in comparison with what ultimately was built. This predates the twin- gabled roof’s removal, and shows a lofty turret set presumably above the stairs.