Inverness Town House

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Inverness Town House
Inverness Town House
LocationHigh Street, Inverness
Coordinates57°28′38″N 4°13′30″W / 57.4773°N 4.2250°W / 57.4773; -4.2250
Built1882
ArchitectWilliam Lawrie
Architectural style(s)Gothic style
Listed Building – Category A
Official nameHigh Street, Town House
Designated21 May 1971
Reference no.LB35260
Inverness Town House is located in Inverness area
Inverness Town House
Shown in Inverness-shire

Inverness Town House is a municipal building in the High Street, Inverness, Scotland. The town hall, which was the headquarters of Inverness Town Council and now serves as a local office of the Highland Council, is a Category A listed building.[1]

History

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The main staircase
The main hall

The first municipal building in the town was the Inverness Tolbooth which dated back to at least 1593. After a new stone bridge was built across the River Ness in 1685, civic officials were accommodated in the East Gatehouse to the bridge.[2]

A town house, intended to accommodate meetings of the burgh council, was built at the corner of Castle Wynd and the High Street.[2] Erected on a site previously occupied by a private residence of Lord Lovat, it was completed in 1708 and subsequently enlarged in 1750.[3] After Duncan Grant of Bught House died in 1873, leaving £5,000 towards the cost of a new town house, civic leaders decided to use the legacy to demolish the old town house and to construct a new building on the same site.[4] Much of the design work had been undertaken by 1876.[5]

The foundation stone for the new building was laid by the provost, Alexander Simpson, on 15 April 1878.[6] It was designed by William Lawrie in the Gothic style, built with ashlar stone at a cost of £13,500 and was officially opened by the Duke of Edinburgh on 19 January 1882.[7] A carved burgh coat of arms which had originally been used to decorate a bridge across the River Ness that had been completed in 1685,[8] was rescued when the bridge was swept away in a flood in January 1849 and embedded in the west elevation of the new town house.[3]

The design was modelled on The McManus, an art gallery and museum in Dundee which had been designed by George Gilbert Scott and completed in 1867.[4] It involved a symmetrical main frontage with seven bays facing onto the High Street; the middle bay featured an arched doorway with a gablet roof on the ground floor, a mullioned window with the town's coat of arms carved into a panel on the first floor and a mullioned window in the attic all flanked by tourelles.[1] The outer bays contained trefoil headed mullioned windows on the ground floor, mullion windows with tracery on the first floor and bartizans at the building corners.[1] Internally, the principal rooms were the main hall, the council chamber and the committee room.[4] The entrance vestibule leading to the staircase was lit by stained glass designed and manufactured by Adam & Small.[1][9]

The council chamber was remodelled to a design by John Hinton Gall in 1894 and stained glass windows, designed by J. H. Stewart, were installed by William Meikle & Sons to celebrate Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee in 1898.[3] The building was extended to the rear to a design by James Robert Rhind in 1907.[3]

The building was the venue for the first British Cabinet meeting to be held outside London on 7 September 1921, when David Lloyd George, interrupted his holiday in Gairloch to call an emergency meeting to discuss the situation in Ireland: the Inverness Formula, which was developed at the meeting, formed the basis of the Anglo-Irish Treaty.[4] King George V also attended the cabinet meeting in 1921 but then returned to the town house in 1929 to be presented with the freedom of the City of Inverness.[3]

Inverness Town Council was replaced by the larger Inverness District Council in 1975, one of the lower-tier districts within the Highland region. The district council used the town house as its headquarters.[10][11] Inverness District Council was in turn abolished in 1996 when the Highland region was redesignated as a single-tier council area. Highland Council continues to use the town house as one of its secondary offices and customer service points.[12]

A two-year programme of refurbishment works to the main frontage of the building was carried out by Laing Traditional Masonry at a cost of £3.9 million based on a design by LDN Architects and completed in February 2018.[13][14] The work, which included the replacement of two stone heraldic dogs,[15] was commended in the UK Natural Stone Awards for 2018.[16]

Works of art in the town house include a portrait by Allan Ramsay of the former Lord Mayor of London, Sir John Barnard,[17] a portrait by Henry Raeburn of the former Provost of Inverness, Sir John Mackintosh of Aberarder[18] and a 16th-century painting by an unknown Italian artist depicting the Holy Family with Saint John the Baptist.[19]

See also

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References

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  1. ^ a b c d Historic Environment Scotland. "High Street, Town House (Category A Listed Building) (LB35260)". Retrieved 15 March 2021.
  2. ^ a b Historic Environment Scotland. "Inverness, 2 Bridge Street, Town Steeple (75318)". Canmore. Retrieved 20 September 2024.
  3. ^ a b c d e "Inverness Castle Conservation Statement" (PDF). LDN Architects. 1 July 2018. p. 32. Retrieved 15 March 2021.
  4. ^ a b c d "Inverness Town House". The Gazetteer for Scotland. Retrieved 15 March 2021.
  5. ^ Gifford, John (2003). Highland and Islands (Buildings of Scotland Series). Yale University Press. p. 66. ISBN 978-0300096255.
  6. ^ "New Municipal Buildings in Scotland". The Builder. 24 August 1878. p. 895.
  7. ^ "Inverness". Gazetteer for Scotland. Retrieved 15 March 2021.
  8. ^ "Act in Favour of Bridge Toll at Inverness 1685". Am Baile. Retrieved 16 March 2021.
  9. ^ Gossman, Lionel. "Stephen Adam: The Early Years and the Glasgow Studio". Victorian Web. Retrieved 19 July 2022.
  10. ^ Municipal Year Book. Municipal Journal. 1976. p. 1051.
  11. ^ "No. 23945". The Edinburgh Gazette. 1 March 1996. p. 516.
  12. ^ "Inverness Service Point". The Highland Council. Retrieved 26 August 2024.
  13. ^ "Over 3,000 visitors check out £3.9m Inverness Town House refurbishment". Press and Journal. 14 February 2018. Retrieved 16 March 2021.
  14. ^ "Final phase of Inverness Town House repairs to begin within months". Press and Journal. 6 April 2018. Retrieved 16 March 2021.
  15. ^ "Wraps aff: Covering removed from Inverness Town House". BBC. 29 August 2017. Retrieved 16 March 2021.
  16. ^ "Inverness Town House takes top stone award". Highland Council. 24 December 2018. Retrieved 16 March 2021.
  17. ^ Ramsay, Allan. "Sir John Barnard (c.1685–1764)". Art UK. Retrieved 16 March 2021.
  18. ^ Raeburn, Henry. "Sir John Mackintosh of Aberarder (d.1815)". Art UK. Retrieved 16 March 2021.
  19. ^ "The Holy Family with Saint John the Baptist". Art UK. Retrieved 16 March 2021.
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