THE cowboy philosopher Will Rogers observed that income tax has made more liars out of people than golf. I reflected on that the other day when observing the old Customs House which still stands on the south side of Inverness High Street. I was reminded of the wee boy who swallowed five pence in Eastgate Centre and, as he choked and shoppers screamed, a man dashed forward, squeezed the child hard and the coin flew out its mouth.
The grateful mother asked if he was a paramedic. He replied: "No, I work for the Inland Revenue."
Our Customs House, where so many squeezed so manfully for so long, is a beautiful Georgian building of the kind that the monarch’s tax gatherers favoured in another era, with outstanding Customs House examples remaining in Dundee, Glasgow, Belfast and Dublin.
The Inverness one was built in 1843 by James Ross, father of the more celebrated local architect Alexander Ross. Big Daddy Ross built the Custom House with input from Archibald Simpson, the famed Aberdeen architect who now has a statue in his honour in the Granite City and the even mightier accolade of a pub being named after him. Ross senior, who was from Stracathro, Angus, carried out work for Simpson and moved to Inverness when asked to undertake contracts Simpson had secured in the North.
Spanning 54-60 High Street, the three-storey building designed in the Greek style, with splendid round pillars and arched doorways, was originally built as the burgh’s Post Office. But when the new, larger one in Queensgate opened in 1890, the customs speedily unpacked their ledgers and took occupancy, asking citizens to count their blessings then send them to the Customs House.
Today we have Clinton Cards at 54-56, Optical Express at 58 and the Royal Bank of Scotland at 60. The bank is beside Market Brae Steps, which was so named because the old market had stood there until the early 1800s. When the Post Office opened, it became Post Office Steps, sensibly reverting to Market Brae Steps when the posties decamped.
Before flitting to the High Street, the customs service had preferred to be located by Inverness Harbour, a prime role at the time being to monitor the incoming shipping. They had premises in Anderson Street, near Thornbush Quay, where they stayed until moving to Shore Street around 1880, being based in a small house with a storm port which still stands, very close to the railway bridge.
On strolling down to High Street the other day to admire the building, I stopped at Optical Express, appropriately whipping out my specs to read the blue heritage plaque I was seeking. It simply stated that the author Neil Gunn had worked there as an excise officer between 1921 and 1937. But did he really?
Caithness-born Gunn, whose novels mainly deal with his fond-remembered Highland communities and panoramas of his adolescence, was the son of a Dunbeath herring boat skipper, one of nine children who went on to write "The Silver Darlings" (1941) about herring fishers. My favourite, however, is "Second Sight", penned the year before, which focuses on a party of wealthy hunters and a team of local stalkers in a Highland shooting lodge with their target a legendary stag. It is both a clash of cultures and values.
Gunn had passed the Civil Service exam and was living in London when, in 1910, he joined the newly-merged Customs and Excise service and was promptly posted to Inverness.
The man who was to become one of the icons of the Scottish Renaissance of the 1920s and 30s worked in an excise office in Glenmhor Distillery on Telford Street, which closed in 1983. It was demolished three years later and the site is now occupied by a General George’s carpet emporium and a small retail park.
Hamish Feggans, who retired in 1994 after a lifetime in Customs and Excise, tells me that Gunn spent most of his working life in the distillery and only popped in to Customs House to pick up his pay packet. That means the plaque should be on the carpet shop, which pulls the rug, as it were, from under the city heritage trust. But leave it where it can be seen by sharp-eyed visitors on the High Street. And if you can’t see it, then two steps takes you in to the spectacles shop where they’ll check your eyesight.
Neil Gunn lived with his wife Daisy in Dalneigh for more than a decade but the street named after him lies on the other side of the city, Neil Gunn Crescent, in the Inshes housing development.
Highland Council and the Neil Gunn Trust run an annual writing competition in his memory. There is a monument in his native Dunbeath and the Neil Gunn Viewpoint just above Dingwall on the way to Strathpeffer has a memorial stone which was unveiled 24 years ago by author Jessie Kesson and poet Sorley Maclean. Gunn, who died in 1973, has a paved slab bearing his name outside the Scottish Writers Museum in Lady Stairs Close, Edinburgh. Not bad for a Dalneigh denizen…
The Custom House was sold for retail use some 30 years ago when the revenue service moved to Caledonia House in Academy Street — now the Encore hotel — and later to Longman House on Longman Road before relocating last year to River House in Young StreetAt the turn of the 20th century that south side of High Street contained no fewer than five drapery businesses . There was also McRitchie the solicitors, clothiers J. Jamieson & Co, and, where the HSBC bank now stands, Liptons grocery store was a mecca for mothers. There was also listed on that stretch of street, a sick nurse, cycle agent, bookbinder, servants registry, dressmaker, gilder, messenger at arms, slater and accountant and stockbroker. Many of these would have upstairs premises though the likes of Thomas Kerr, Leather Merchant and the Clan Tartan Warehouse had street frontage. And two names which have stood the test of time. One is Howdens, described then as seedsmen and nurserymen, a business which later thrived for decades where Lidl now stands, opposite what was Caledonian FC’s Telford Street Park. It is now relocated, as a garden centre and part of a national chain, at Stoneyfield.
But the other name is still where it was 110 years ago. Stumped? It is the humble DE shoe shop, listed at 32 High Street in 1900 with the grand title of Dundee Equitable Boot Depot, and still operating there, part of a Scottish chain begun by William Smith back in 1867. There is something charming about its survival.
So, when you’re Christmas shopping or just sauntering through the pedestrian precinct, take time to glance up at Custom House and consider its past splendour and enduring superiority over newer buildings in the vicinity.
