Forward thinking needed for historic RNI building
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THE former Royal Northern Infirmary’s elegant frontage on the city’s riverside is much admired, but some innovative thinking needs to start soon to ensure that it is still a working building in a couple of years time. The alternative is to risk another splendid and historic edifice falling in to disuse.
Since 2004 it has been the home of the UHI Millennium Institute who, with the help of a £2 million grant from the Millennium Commission, bought it from Morrison Construction who had planning consent to turn it into flats, as they had done with former ward space to the rear.
The timetable for the new Inverness Campus at Beechwood being up and running is 2014. The University of the Highlands and Islands will need to have better luck than Wayne Rooney’s wigmaker if they are to meet that deadline, particularly if the Scottish Government applies the spending brakes.
There are 60 UHI staff at the RNI and a further 40 at Fairways Business Park, and although no final decision has officially been taken, it makes hard economic sense for these people to flit to Beechwood where, for instance, there could be a single reception desk and other means of saving cash via rationalisation.
Selling the RNI could generate an important cash receipt for the university, but that could also take us back to turning this iconic structure into flats. There needs to be some forward thinking now about an alternative use which keeps the building in public, high profile use.
The call to set up an infirmary began in 1797 with Provost William Inglis leading the great and good of the era in planning and raising the necessary £5000. Fraser of Torbreck kindly gifted the four acres of land at Ballifeary and in 1800 the foundation stone was laid, though the hospital was not completed until 1804, the first patients being admitted in May that year.
To put it into context, this was only 12 years after Inverness Academy was built and four years before the town had its first newspaper.
The infirmary’s first “sick nurses” were paid £6 a year, though some might prefer we don’t put ideas in to heads of NHS Highland. Like the person who, when asked why they chose to be a nurse, replied: “Well, it pays better than a fast food place, though the hours aren’t as good.”.
On the wall of the RNI Community Hospital which is nowadays located behind the old main building, I’ve seen a poster for January, 1841, when a Benefit Ball for the RNI was held at the Northern Meeting Rooms under the patronage of Lady Saltoun, Lady Lovat, Lady Mackenzie of Gairloch, Lady Mackenzie of Kilcoy and Lady Rose of Holme. Listed among the stewards for the night were Lord Lovat and the Provost of Inverness. I don’t know if the latter were any good in a scrap, but bouncers nowadays certainly lack that kind of social cachet.
Making the Northern Infirmary break even was a regular struggle. Again, on the community hospital wall, there’s a poster announcing Infirmary Week in September 1922 including three cricket matches, an auction sale, a fete in the Islands and a Town and County Ball in the Northern Meeting Rooms. There was also a garden party at Heatherley House including tennis tournament and afternoon dance, for which I very much doubt they required bouncers.
GH Mackintosh of Raigmore, convenor of the fundraising committee behind that Infirmary Week, wrote: “It would be a real tragedy if, for lack of funds, the infirmary had to close down a large number of beds which are too few as it is.” The more things change, the more they stay the same. His statement rings true for our current main hospital 89 years later. I actually read that poster the day it was announced that the NHS sheds 65 staff in Scotland every week.
Between the wars, local football clubs competed in an Inverness Hospital Beds Cup to raise cash for the Northern Infirmary. A public appeal raised over £90,000 to pay for a major extension, opened by the Duke and Duchess of York in May 1929. In the 1930s several ward blocks and theatres were added as a result of which King George V gave the infirmary the right to call itself Royal and the RNI was born.
It went on to become part of the heritage of Inverness and the changing Highlands. The parents and/or grandparents of a great many present Inverness Courier readers were born there and this pioneering regional hospital is fondly remembered.
The RNI remained the Highlands’ main general hospital until 1985 when most of its departments crossed the river to locate at the expanded new Raigmore Hospital. The infirmary’s role was reduced to a geriatric assessment unit with associated beds but even that use withered and eventually it was sold to the housebuilder.
The main building is B Listed so when UHI decamps to Beechwood, it cannot be flattened to build a Premier Inn or such like. UHI did the RNI a favour with some tasteful modernisation while preserving the splendid character of the place.
We need some brainstorming to try to ensure that the RNI does not lie needlessly empty for years once the campus opens. Can the council not vacate the Town House for tourism purposes and move its staff to the riverside? Or can it become the new Sheriff Court, allowing Inverness Castle to be the superb visitor facility it should be? There needs to be a partnership set up to bounce ideas and drive forward a future for the RNI premises.
It would truly be a crime to allow dust to cloud the windows of a great building built and supported by good people for a wonderful purpose more than 200 years ago. Surely silence and weeds should not be its ultimate fate. That would be a sorry legacy for the RNI.
Hollywood and the Highlands
FIRST the Barclays Scottish Open, now Batman could zoom out of the Bat Cave and hightail it up the A9, road works allowing. Holy Highlands! It’s excellent that scenes from “The Dark Knight Rises”, the next spectacular starring the caped crusader, could be shot on the A9. Hopefully there could be some economic spin off to Gotham City, sorry, Inverness.
There is a much more enlightened view to accommodating film crews nowadays. I recall when Billy Wilder was in Inverness filming “The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes”, which was released in 1970, he thought Tomnahurich Cemetery by moonlight would be ideal for shooting a scene featuring villainous monks.
But Inverness Council got on its high horse and refused consent on the basis that it would be an act of profanity. So Wilder found another location though the film still included the line “Inverness — The Cemetery”.
Urquhart Castle featured prominently in that film, starring Robert Stephens and Christopher Lee. Which is more than it did when “Loch Ness”, starring Ted Danson, was released in 1995 with a grand parade to the then La Scala cinema for the first showing.
Although some of the film was shot round Loch Ness, the castle in the film was actually Eilean Donan and Loch Diabaig and Torridon was where the bulk of shooting took place for what was an eminently unsuccessful movie. It was the biggest disaster since the budgie broke its leg and we used matchsticks as splints, forgetting that the cage was lined with sandpaper.
The plane crash on the A9 might well end up by-passing Inverness cinematically, but it does no harm to be associated with Hollywood.
As with the golf which begins on Thursday. Local people who have not played Castle Stuart will not realise the completely new vistas over the firth which the course offers. It is a truly splendid setting which TV will translate in to living rooms worldwide, a massive free tourism launchpad for the area.
That smart trio Grant Sword, Fraser Cromarty and Stuart McColm have done wonderful work to market such a new course to the stage where Phil Mickelson and company tee up.
Let’s hope the rain is warm.
