Bill McAllister: Development aims to have city's showpiece centre stage

Next month sees the 160th anniversary of four local livewires unveiling plans to create a splendid new Inverness thoroughfare. A decrepit old close off Church Street was to be demolished – and Union Street, arguably our city’s showpiece, would be born.

That close was called Ettles Court, taking its name from the hotel acquired by John Ettles in 1790, but its turf-roofed homes, which lay on either side of some green space, were in an unsightly state when, in April, 1863, work began on constructing blocks of elegant new buildings.

The rationale was to create a direct route from Church Street to the railway station, which had opened eight years earlier to service the Inverness and Nairn Railway company’s routes.

A visionary quartet of young entrepreneurs saw an opportunity for new retail space. They came up with a street 50 feet wide – significantly wider than any other in the burgh – with two pavements, each nine feet wide.

George Mackay, an engineer, linked up with three solicitors, Charles Fraser Mackintosh, Hugh Rose and Donald Davidson, to develop land they had bought for £6,000. Union Street today would be valued at many millions…

Mackintosh, a Dochgarroch lad who would later be a notable MP, teamed up with Mackay that same year to acquire Drummond estate, another shrewd investment. Two years later, Mackintosh swooped to buy Wester Ballifeary and the 300 acres from these two estates was feued as house plots, meeting the demand from Inverness’s emerging middle class.

This pioneering property development project allowed Mackintosh to tour Europe for two years.

In Union Street, the quartet devised what has been hailed as an excellent example of a Victorian-era ‘corridor’ shopping street. Innovatively, they conceived it as a single development “with all modern appliances and conveniences”.

The Courier hailed the new street as “on a scale and of an architectural character for which, to be candid, we were by no means prepared”. It added:”We have no hesitation in saying that it will be one of the most important and extensive improvements ever made in Inverness.” That judgment stands the test of time…

Construction began immediately with William Lawrie, who had completed the Town House the year before, designing 1-17 Union Street, at the High Street end, with an Italianate-style frontage at the Academy

Street end where the Caledonian Sleeper office currently stands. It housed a department store and six offices upstairs which boasted, in the Courier’s words, “lavatories and other conveniences”.

A United Presbyterian Church, complete with lantern tower, was built at 19 Union Street – but in 1901 it was dismantled and re-erected as a Masonic lodge in Alness! In its place rose the Royal Bank building at the corner of Drummond Street.

Next door at 21-39, Lawrie built the three-storey Waverley Hotel which later became the Douglas Hotel, which burned down in the 1980s.

Another local architect, John Rhind, designed the Royal Hotel, also with an Italian-style façade.

The street’s north side is also three storeys with attics above the eaves, cornices and balustrading. Alexander Ross, ‘the Christopher Wren of the North’, built a Music Hall at, 26-36, the Church Street end. In 1922 this venue became a Methodist Church, which was gutted by fire on December 6/7, 1961.

Ross’s firm also created 10-24 Union Street in 1863, adding 38-46 the next year. The skills of the various architects, coupled with the vision of the ‘fab four’ investors, offered the new street a grace and elegance which it retains to this day.

Much-missed Arnotts was the street’s anchor department store from the 1970s until closing in 2003, having succeeded the Benzie and Miller store on the same site, which opened in 1952.

Now the finishing touches are being put to a £12 million development on the Arnotts site. Union Court aims to attract, shops, cafés and offices, while 50 apartments are also included.

Union Street, high and admirable, continues to evolve, without losing its grandeur.