BILL McALLISTER: The story of how Inverness established a Bishop’s Palace

This year marks the 145th anniversary of the opening of what we now know as the Bishop’s Palace – a handsome listed building on Ness Walk.

It is also the 170th anniversary of the man who lived there, Robert Eden, proposing that Inverness should have a cathedral – a vision which came true.

His name, of course, lives on in Eden Court Theatre, but the adjoining palace is worthy of its own tale.

Eden, educated at Westminster School and Christ Church college, Oxford, became an Anglican priest 95 years ago. In 1851, he accepted the offer of Bishop of Moray and Ross, at a quarter of his Sussex salary.

He was originally based in Elgin, where the cathedral had been burnt down by the Wolf of Badenoch. The astute Eden decided that its successor should be located in Inverness – and expressed this view strongly in 1853. It took more than a decade before funding made his message become reality.

By 1866, the town’s two Episcopalian venues, a Mission Chapel and St John’s in Church Street, were extremely overcrowded.

Eden secured the Archbishop of Canterbury, an old friend, to lay the foundation stone on October 17, 1866. Inverness declared a public holiday and vast crowds arrayed the streets to see the Archbishop, whose retinue of bishops included one from North Carolina.

Eden’s first Inverness home was a cottage beside his riverbank chapel. Later, however, he moved to more substantial premises at Hedgefield House, now divided into apartments off Culduthel Road.

The businesslike bishop was a shrewd operator who sent his Bishopric’s annual income soaring by 400 per cent and in 1869, Britain’s first new cathedral since the Reformation was opened.

Grateful parishioners agreed that Eden should move across the river to a new home to be built within sight of his cathedral. The bishop and his wife Emma had 10 children – five boys and five girls – and larger accommodation was required.

Alexander Ross, the cathedral’s architect, was engaged and began work in 1875 on a 12-bedroom mansion which included ‘the most modern and extensive plumbing for its time’.

An elegant pitch-pine gallery and staircase were a feature of the premises, which also boasted four reception rooms, a dining room, drawing room, library and morning room.

The building, completed in 1878 and named Eden Court, cost £6000 in parishioners’ funds, although the bishop stumped up for the bow-ended private chapel at the rear.

Eden actually only lived in it eight years with his family. He died in 1886 and lies buried in Tomnahurch Cemetery.

The next three bishops all occupied the house. By the 1940s, however, it was seen as too large for purposes, with no electricity and chilly in a Highland winter.

During World War II, the Blood Transfusion Unit and the Women’s Voluntary Service used the upper floors. Bishop Holt Wilson vacated the premises in 1947 and the building was acquired by Northern Hospitals Management Board for conversion to a nurses’ home and training centre.

When the nurses moved to Raigmore Hospital in 1966, Inverness Town Council paid £29,000 for the building and land as a civic theatre was proposed. Eden Court Theatre opened in April 1976, with the attached building now named the Bishop’s Palace.

The butler’s pantry became the theatre’s wardrobe area while the chapel was the green room. Six years after Eden Court opened, the palace’s drawing room and morning room were converted to a cinema.

The old house, however, was revitalised 20 years ago when a blueprint for an Eden Court facelift, completed in 2007, included restoration of the palace and a permanent exhibition of the history of the building.

It remains impressive, particularly around the staircase, and is now used for receptions and craft events. The chapel has also been a striking wedding venue.

The original Eden Court, now a palace, remains attractive inside and out. Sometimes, in the evening gloom, can the shade of bishop Robert be glimpsed in his old home?

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