CHARLES BANNERMAN: Could Old High be used to celebrate city’s heritage?

When it emerged, just over a fortnight after final confirmation that the Ironworks would close, that the Old High Church was up for sale, the solution seemed straightforward.

Convert the church into a music venue. But now I’m not so sure.

Inverness badly needs such a venue, but I just don’t think that the Old High is the right place.

I have no concerns at all about the principle of a former church, de-consectrated if necessary, being used for secular purposes. Indeed, Oran Mor in Glasgow, formerly Kelvinside Parish Church, has become an iconic place of entertainment.

But in Inverness, I see the Old High Church as just too central to the city’s history and culture for any future use other than historical and cultural. For centuries, it was regarded as the “Town Church”, which possibly gave it a few extra decades of existence, despite a huge fall in attendance.

It was the long time venue for the Kirking of the Council and from its tower the “Eight O’clock Bell”, originally heralding the curfew, has for long rung out across Inverness. Then there’s the extreme age of parts of it, and I’d also worry about the proximity of sometimes drunken music fans and an historical graveyard. The Old High has such special and long-standing history and culture attached that it just has to continue as somewhere reflecting that.

Whatever it becomes, I can’t predict how funds might be raised to meet the “offers over £150,000” asking price. But there’s a great deal of history and real estate available for the price of a two-bedroom semi... or less than half the cost of the Gathering Place. Indeed, I was rather taken aback when I saw how cheap it was, although conversion and upkeep costs, especially heating a building like this at current prices, might be substantial.

Ideally, I’d love to see the Old High Church become a venue to celebrate and showcase Inverness’s social history, in which the building itself has played a significant part.

The museum in Upper Bridge Street has certainly upped its game in more recent years, but it’s still a bit thin on exhibits that reflect how people in Inverness lived. About what made the place tick across the centuries.

I’d take as a model the magnificent Wick Heritage Centre, created by volunteers and an absolute Aladdin’s Cave of items showing how Wickers went about their lives. There’s everything in there from the glory days of herring fishing through cooperage and rope making to the first wartime air raids on the British mainland, and a lot more including 40,000 photographs. Every time I go there I can’t avoid feeling envious that Inverness has no such record of public life.

Perhaps such a conversion might also accommodate small capacity music recitals, if not multi-decibel, alcohol-dependent celebrations for audiences of hundreds.

That’s just one suggestion, and I’m sure there are plenty other options that might provide some kind of focal point for the celebration of Inverness’s heritage.

Finance is, of course, the bottom line, but if millions can be found for necessary renovations of Bught Park and Northern Meeting Park, surely we can maintain one of the most aged structures in a city not well off for aged structures, and in a manner that reflects its historical significance.

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