How to get a fascinating glimpse of the rarefied strata of past Highland society
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The Northern Meeting was founded in 1788 to bring together the families of the northern Highlands, irrespective of their allegiance in the 1745 Rising, for a week of social activities free of political views, business ambitions and all the other worries of the time.
It was a combination of the rise in the fortunes of Inverness bringing improvements to its hotels, together with the persistent problems of travel, that prompted 13 Highland gentlemen to meet at Inverness on June 11, 1788 and discuss ways of improving social life in the north.
Each evening, after dinner at a local hotel, the company moved to Inverness Town Hall for the Ball, where great attention was paid to the formality of the dress and the correctness of the dancing. The following year, the Northern Meeting proposed to build its own rooms and purchased a site on the corner of Church Street and Baron Taylor’s Street. Modelled on the assembly rooms in Edinburgh, the building had to be continually altered, extended and repaired.
The site was sold to developers in 1962, since then the Summer Ball and Christmas events have been held at various venues in and around Inverness.
Sports and games were introduced into the Northern Meeting’s programme around 1835 and the Northern Meeting’s own park was established in Inverness in 1864.
This provided the venue for the games for the next 70 years until the onset of World War II when they ceased, and the Northern Meeting Park was subsequently sold to Inverness Burgh Council.
In 1841, what was billed as ‘An exhibition of Pipers and Dancers’ was included in the programme for the games and was the origin of the internationally famous Northern Meeting Piping Competitions, held annually in September. The Northern Meeting Piping Trust, which now oversees the organisation of the piping competitions, as well as giving financial support to encourage talented young musicians to learn the fiddle or the pipes, was formally established in 1979.
Apart from the history of the Northern Meeting as an organisation, the papers provide a fascinating glimpse of the rarefied strata of Highland society during the 19th and 20th centuries and provide some information about the participants in the games, local tradesmen, and businesses.
The collection includes Northern Meeting minute books, registers of Ball tickets issued and cash books. ‘The Northern Meeting 1788-1988’ by Angus Fairrie (published by the Pentland Press) is a detailed history of the meeting, illustrated with black and white photographs. In the past, an attempt was made to sort the correspondence papers into three groups: Northern Meeting Rooms, balls and games, but the task was not completed. This arrangement has been retained, with the addition of a fourth – administration.
Access to records less than 75 years old in the collection of the Northern Meeting held at the Highland Archive Centre requires the written permission of the Northern Meeting executive committee.
