BILL McALLISTER: Inverness Town House was not always such an imposing and beloved structure
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SIMON Fraser’s kidnapping of his kinsman’s widow speeded the process by which Lord Lovat’s Inverness residence became the town house, the rather plain predecessor of the current one.
“What was there before?” I was asked following last week’s column on the opening of the present civic chamber.
Like a number of clan chiefs, the Lovats kept a town house for business and social purposes and theirs was built beside the Exchange, the burgh’s meeting point which sat in front of the present civic HQ.
The Lovat finances had been sorely stretched by a borrowing binge and the death of the chief in 1633 left his estate “in insuperable debt”.
When Hugh Fraser, 9th Lord Lovat, died in 1696 without an heir his cousin Thomas pressed to become chief. His son Simon violently abducted Hugh’s widow, Lady Amelia, and forced her into marriage in support of his father’s claim.
Thomas became the 10th chief but Simon was outlawed, though he did eventually succeed him. In 1709 the Lovat residence was sold to the council to help ease debts, though seven years passed before they first used it.
Gradually it was expanded into a three-storey building. The top floor was given over to use by the Trades Guilds, after they significantly donated to the cost.
An arcade of seven arches fronted the ground floor, which housed a public reading room. The council chamber itself and Provost’s room were on the first floor.
Before that, the council had met in “the Laigh Council House”, formerly owned by the Robertsons of Inshes. It stood on the south-west corner of Bridge Street, with an alley below Castle Hill which led to the Ness – with what is now Castle Road being only a riverside footpath then. This later became “new Castle Tolmie”, a block of buildings demolished in 1960.
The Forbes of Culloden family had, in 1630, built their residence on the corner of Castle Wynd where the museum is now. It later became the Horns Hotel and was where, after the Battle of Culloden, Provost John Hossack was roughly booted downstairs when complaining to General Hawley about his troops’ rough treatment of locals. He was forever after nicknamed “The Kicked Provost”.
In 1785, the Horns became Ettles Hotel, where Robert Burns stayed two years later, while in the 19th century it became the Commercial Hotel.
Captain Edmund Burt, in his 1754 “Letters from a Gentleman in the North of Scotland”, called the town house “a plain building of rubble”. He said: “There is but one room in it where the Magistrates meet upon the Town Business which would be tolerably handsome but the walls are rough, not plastered.” Burt added the only furniture was a table “and some bad chairs” and the room was “altogether immoderately dirty.”
Local MP and historian Charles Fraser-Mackintosh commented in 1854 that “the Town Hall, though a handsome and roomy building, is not strong.” He suggested its demolition “to permit the erection of such extensive and elegant buildings as the convenience of the site, importance of the town and growing requirements of trade do certainly demand.”
The council held its last meeting there in 1878.
Simon Fraser, whose behaviour accelerated the sale to the council was later known as the “Old Fox”. He was being executed for treason at the Tower of London when a stand collapsed, killing spectators.
He was still mightily amused at their fate as the axe fell. The incident gave rise to the phrase “laughing his head off”.
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